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The  Great  Secret 


The  Great  Secret 

BY 
MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

Translated  by 
BERNARD  MIALL 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1922 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
THE  CENTUBY  Co. 


FEINTED   IN   U.    8.   A. 


-E  L  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA  COLLEGE  LIBRARY; 


CONTENTS 

OHAPTBB  PAGB 

I     PROLOGUE 3 

II     INDIA 26 

III  EGYPT 98 

IV  PERSIA 116 

V    CHALDEA 121 

VI  GREECE  BEFORE  SOCRATES     .      .      .     .126 

VII  THE  GNOSTICS  AND  THE  NEOPLATONISTS  153 

VIII     THE  CABALA 159 

IX    THE  ALCHEMISTS 179 

X  THE  MODERN  OCCULTISTS  ....  192 

XI     THE  METAPSYCHISTS 214 

XII     CONCLUSIONS 255 


THE  GREAT  SECRET 


THE  GREAT  SECRET 


CHAPTER  I 

PROLOGUE 


DO  not  look  to  find  in  this  volume  a  history 
of  occultism,  or  a  methodical  monograph 
on  the  subject.  To  such  a  work  one  would 
need  to  devote  whole  volumes,  which  would  of 
necessity  be  filled  with  a  great  measure  of  that 
very  rubbish  which  I  wish  above  all  to  spare  the 
reader.  I  have  no  other  aim  than  to  tell  as 
simply  as  possible  what  I  have  learned  in  the 
course  of  some  years  that  were  spent  in  these 
rather  discredited  and  unfrequented  regions. 

I  bring  thence  the  impressions  of  a  candid 
traveler  who  has  traversed  them  rather  as  one 
seeking  to  observe  than  as  a  believer.  These 
pages  contain,  if  you  will,  a  kind  of  summary,  a 
provisional  stock-taking.  I  know  nothing  that 
may  not  be  learned  by  the  first  comer  who  will 
travel  the  same  road.  I  am  not  an  initiate; 
I  have  sat  at  the  feet  of  no  mysterious  and  evan- 
escent masters,  coming  from  the  ends  of  the 

3 


The  Great  Secret 

earth,  or  from  another  world,  expressly  to  re- 
veal to  me  the  ultimate  verities  and  to  forbid 
me  to  repeat  them.  I  have  had  no  access  to 
those  secret  libraries,  to  those  hidden  sources 
of  the  supreme  wisdom  which,  it  seems,  are 
somewhere  to  be  found  but  will  always  be  for 
us  as  though  they  were  not,  since  those  who 
win  through  to  them  are  condemned,  on  pain 
of  death,  to  an  inviolable  silence.  Neither 
have  I  deciphered  any  incomprehensible  books 
of  magic,  nor  found  a  new  key  to  the  sacred 
books  of  the  great  religions.  I  have  but  read 
and  studied  most  of  what  has  been  written  of 
these  matters,  and  amidst  an  enormous  mass  of 
documents,  absurd,  puerile,  tedious,  and  useless, 
I  have  given  my  attention  to  those  works  of 
outstanding  value  which  are  really  able  to  teach 
us  something  that  we  do  not  find  elsewhere. 
In  thus  clearing  the  approaches  to  an  inquiry 
that  is  only  too  often  encumbered  by  a  weari- 
some amount  of  rubbish,  I  shall  perhaps  facil- 
itate the  task  of  those  who  may  wish,  and  be 
able,  to  go  farther  than  I  have  traveled. 


Thanks  to  the  labors  of  a  science  which 'is 
comparatively  recent,  and  more  especially  to 
the  researches  of  the  students  of  Hindu  and 
Egyptian  antiquities,  it  is  very  much  easier  to- 
day than  it  was  not  so  long  ago  to  discover  the 

4 


Prologue 

source,  to  ascend  the  course  and  unravel  the 
underground  network  of  that  great  mysterious 
river  which  since  the  beginning  of  history  has 
been  flowing  beneath  all  the  religions,  all  the 
faiths,  and  all  the  philosophies:  in  a  word,  be- 
neath all  the  visible  and  every-day  manifesta- 
tions of  human  thought.  It  is  now  hardly  to 
be  contested  that  this  source  is  to  be  found  in 
ancient  India.  Thence  in  all  probability  the 
sacred  teaching  spread  into  Egypt,  found  its 
way  to  ancient  Persia  and  Chaldea,  permeated 
the  Hebrew  race,  and  crept  into  Greece  and  the 
north  of  Europe,  finally  reaching  China  and 
even  America,  where  the  Aztec  civilization  was 
merely  a  more  or  less  distorted  reproduction 
of  the  Egyptian  civilization. 

There  are  thus  three  great  derivatives  of 
primitive  occultism,  Arya-Hindu  or  Atlanto- 
Hindu  :  ( i )  the  occultism  of  antiquity — that 
is,  the  Egyptian,  Persian,  Chaldean,  and  He- 
brew occultism  and  that  of  the  Greek  myster- 
ies; (2)  the  Hebrew-Christian  esoterism  of  the 
Essenes,  the  Gnostics,  the  Neoplatonists  of 
Alexandria,  and  the  cabalists  of  the  middle 
ages;  and  (3)  the  modern  occultism,  which  is 
more  or  less  permeated  by  the  foregoing,  but 
which,  under  the  somewhat  inaccurate  label  of 
occultism,  denotes  more  especially,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  theosophists,  the  spiritualism  and 
metapsychism  of  to-day. 

5 


The  Great  Secret 

3 

As  for  the  sources  of  the  primary  source,  it 
is  almost  impossible  to  rediscover  them.  Here 
we  have  only  the  assertions  of  the  occultist  tra- 
dition, which  seem,  here  and  there,  to  be  con- 
firmed by  historical  discoveries.  This  tradi- 
tion attributes  the  vast  reservoir  of  wisdom 
that  somewhere  took  shape  simultaneously  with 
the  origin  of  man,  or  even  if  we  are  to  credit 
it,  before  his  advent  upon  this  earth,  to  more 
spiritual  entities,  to  beings  less  entangled  in 
matter,  to  psychic  organisms,  of  whom  the  last- 
comers,  the  Atlantides,  could  have  been  but  the 
degenerate  representatives. 

From  the  historical  point  of  view  we  have 
absolutely  no  documents  whatever  if  we  go 
back  a  greater  distance  than  five,  or  six,  or 
perhaps  seven  thousand  years.  We  cannot  tell 
how  the  religion  of  the  Hindus  and  Egyptians 
came  into  being.  When  we  become  aware  of 
it  we  find  it  already  complete  in  its  broad  out- 
lines, its  main  principles.  Not  only  is  it  com- 
plete, but  the  farther  back  we  go  the  more  per- 
fect it  is,  the  more  unadulterated,  the  more 
closely  related  to  the  loftiest  speculations  of 
our  modern  agnosticism.  It  presupposes  a  pre- 
vious civilization,  whose  duration,  in  view  of 
the  slowness  of  all  human  evolution,  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  estimate.  The  length  of  this 

6 


Prologue 

period  might  in  all  probability  be  numbered  by 
millions  of  years.  It  is  here  that  the  occultist 
tradition  comes  to  our  aid.  Why  should  this 
tradition,  a  priori,  be  despised  and  rejected, 
when  almost  all  that  we  know  of  these  primi- 
tive religions  is  likewise  founded  on  oral  tradi- 
tion— for  the  written  texts  are  of  much  later 
date, — and  when,  moreover,  all  that  this  tradi- 
tion teaches  us  displays  a  singular  agreement 
with  what  we  have  learned  elsewhere  ? 

4 

At  all  events,  even  if  we  have  need  of  occult 
tradition  to  explain  the  origin  of  this  wisdom, 
which  to  us,  with  good  reason,  has  a  savor  of 
the  superhuman,  we  can  very  well  dispense  with 
it  in  all  that  concerns  the  essential  nature  of 
this  same  wisdom.  It  is  contained,  in  all  its 
integrity,  in  authentic  texts,  to  which  we  can 
assign  a  place  in  history;  and  in  this  connection 
the  modern  theosophists,  who  profess  to  have 
had  at  their  disposal  certain  secret  documents, 
and  to  have  profited  by  the  extraordinary  reve- 
lations with  which  the  adepts  or  Mahatmas, 
members  of  a  mysterious  brotherhood,  are  sup- 
posed to  have  favored  them,  have  taught  us 
nothing  that  may  not  be  read  in  the  writings 
accessible  to  any  Orientalist.  The  factors 
which  distinguish  the  occultists — for  example, 
the  theosophists  of  Blavatski's  school,  which 

7 


The  Great  Secret 

dominates  all  the  rest — from  the  scientific  In- 
dianists  and  Egyptologists  are  in  nowise  con- 
nected with  the  origin,  the  plan,  and  the  pur- 
pose of  the  universe,  the  destiny  of  the  earth 
and  of  man,  the  nature  of  divinity,  and  the 
great  problems  of  ethics;  they  are,  almost  ex- 
clusively, problems  touching  the  prehistoric 
ages,  the  nomenclature  of  the  emanations  of 
the  unknowable,  and  the  methods  of  subdu- 
ing and  utilizing  the  unknown  energies  of  na- 
ture. 

Let  us  first  of  all  consider  the  points  upon 
which  they  are  agreed;  which  are,  for  that  mat- 
ter, the  most  interesting,  for  all  that  deals  with 
the  prehistoric  era  is  of  necessity  hypothetical 
and  the  names  and  functions  of  the  interme- 
diary gods  possess  only  a  secondary  interest; 
while  as  for  the  utilization  of  unknown  forces, 
this  is  rather  the  concern  of  the  metapsychical 
sciences  to  which  we  shall  refer  in  a  later 
chapter. 

5 

"What  we  read  in  the  'Vedas,'  "  says  Ru- 
dolph Steiner,  one  of  the  most  scholarly  and,  at 
the  same  time,  one  of  the  most  baffling  of  con- 
temporary occultists;  "What  we  read  in  the 
'Vedas,'  those  archives  of  Hindu  wisdom,  gives 
us  only  a  faint  idea  of  the  sublime  doctrines 
of  the  ancient  teachers,  and  even  so  these  are 

8 


Prologue 

not  in  their  original  form.  Only  the  gaze  of 
the  clairvoyant,  directed  upon  the  mysteries  of 
the  past,  may  reveal  the  unuttered  wisdom 
which  lies  hidden  behind  these  writings." 

Historically  it  is  highly  probable  that  Steiner 
is  right.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  I  have  al- 
ready stated,  the  more  ancient  the  texts,  the 
purer,  the  more  awe-inspiring  are  the  doctrines 
which  they  reveal;  and  it  is  possible  that  they 
themselves  are,  in  Steiner's  words,  merely  an 
enfeebled  echo  of  sublimer  doctrines.  But  if 
we  are  not  gifted  with  the  vision  of  a  seer  we 
must  be  content  with  what  we  have  before  our 
eyes. 

The  texts  which  we  possess  are  the  sacred 
books  of  India,  which  corroborate  those  of 
Egypt  and  of  Persia.  The  influence  which 
they  have  exerted  upon  human  thought,  if  not 
in  their  present  form,  at  least  by  means  of  the 
oral  tradition  which  they  have  merely  placed 
on  record,  goes  back  to  the  beginnings  of  his- 
tory, has  extended  itself  in  all  directions,  and 
has  never  ceased  to  make  itself  felt,  but  as 
regards  the  Western  world  their  discovery  and 
methodical  study  are  comparatively  recent. 
"Fifty  years  ago,"  wrote  Max  Miiller  in  1875, 
"there  was  not  a  scholar  in  existence  who  could 
translate  a  line  of  the  'Veda,'  the  'Zend- 
Avesta,'  or  the  Buddhist  'Tripitaka,'  to  say 
nothing  of  other  dialects  or  languages." 

9 


The  Great  Secret 

If  the  historical  data  were  to  assume  from 
the  outset  in  the  annals  of  mankind  the  signifi- 
cance which  they  were  afterward  to  acquire, 
the  discovery  of  these  sacred  books  would  prob- 
ably have  turned  all  Europe  upside  down;  for 
it  was,  without  a  doubt,  the  most  important 
event  which  had  occurred  since  the  advent  of 
Christianity.  But  a  moral  or  spiritual  event 
very  rarely  propagates  itself  quickly  through 
the  masses.  It  is  opposed  by  too  many  forces 
which  would  gain  by  its  suppression.  This 
particular  event  remained  confined  to  a  small 
circle  of  scholars  and  philologists,  and  affected 
the  meta-physician  and  the  moral  philosopher 
even  less  than  might  have  been  expected.  It  is 
still  awaiting  the  hour  of  its  full  expansion. 


The  first  question  to  present  itself  is  that 
of  the  date  of  these  texts.  It  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  answer  this  question  exactly;  for 
while  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  determine  the 
period  when  these  books  were  written  it  is  im- 
possible to  estimate  the  time  during  which  they 
existed  only  in  the  memory  of  man.  Accord- 
ing to  Max  Miiller  there  is  hardly  a  Sanskrit 
manuscript  in  existence  that  dates  farther  back 
than  1000  A.  D.,  and  everything  seems  to  show 
that  writing  was  unknown  in  India  until  the 
beginning  of  the  Buddhist  era  (the  fifth  cen- 

10 


Prologue 

tury  B.  c.)  ;  that  is  until  the  close  of  the  period 
of  the  ancient  Vedic  literature. 

The  "Rig- Veda,"  which  contains  1028  hymns 
of  an  average  length  of  ten  lines,  or  a  total  of 
153,826  words,  was  therefore  preserved  by  the 
effort  of  the  memory  alone.  Even  to-day  the 
Brahmans  all  know  the  "Rig-Veda"  by  heart, 
as  did  their  ancestors  three  thousand  years  ago. 
We  must  attribute  the  spontaneous  development 
of  Vedic  thought,  as  we  find  it  in  the  "Rig- 
Veda,"  to  a  period  earlier  than  the  tenth  cen- 
tury B.  C.  Three  centuries  before  the  Chris- 
tian era — once  more,  according  to  Max  Mu'ller 
— Sanskrit  had  already  ceased  to  be  spoken  by 
the  people.  This  is  proved  by  an  inscription 
whose  language  is  to  Sanskrit  what  Italian  is 
to  Latin. 

But  according  to  other  Orientalists  the  age 
of  the  "Chandas"  probably  goes  back  to  a  pe- 
riod two  or  three  thousand  years  before  Christ. 
This  takes  us  back  five  thousand  years :  a  very 
modest  and  prudent  claim.  "One  thing  is  cer- 
tain," says  Max  Miiller,  "namely,  that  there  is 
nothing  more  ancient,  nothing  more  primitive, 
than  the  hymns  of  the  'Rig-Veda,'  whether  in 
India  or  the  whole  Aryan  world.  Being 
Aryan  in  language  and  thought,  the  'Rig- Veda' 
is  the  most  ancient  of  our  sacred  books."  1 

Since  the  works  of  the  great  Orientalist  were 

1  Max  Muller,  "Origin  and  Development  of  Religion." 
II 


The  Great  Secret 

written  other  scholars  have  set  back  the  date 
of  the  earliest  manuscripts,  and  above  all  of  the 
earliest  traditions,  to  a  remarkable  extent;  but 
even  so  these  dates  fall  short  by  a  stupendous 
amount  of  the  Brahman  calculations,  which 
refer  the  origin  of  their  earliest  books  to  thou- 
sands of  centuries  before  our  era.  "It  is  actu- 
ally more  than  five  thousand  years,"  says 
Swami  Dayanound  Saraswati,  "since  the  'Vedas' 
have  ceased  to  be  a  subject  of  investigation"; 
and  according  to  the  computations  of  the  Ori- 
entalist Hailed,  the  "Shastras,"  in  the  chronol- 
ogy of  the  Brahmans,  must  be  no  less  than  seven 
million  years  old. 

Without  taking  sides  in  these  disputes  the 
only  point  which  it  is  important  to  establish  is 
the  fact  that  these  books,  or  rather  the  tradi- 
tions which  they  have  recorded  and  rendered 
permanent,  are  evidently  anterior — with  the 
possible  exceptions  of  Egypt,  China,  and 
Chaldea — to  anything  known  of  human  history. 

7 

This  literature  comprises,  in  the  first  place, 
the  four  "Vedas" :  the  "Rig-Veda,"  the  "Sama- 
Veda,"  the  "Yadjour-Veda,"  and  the  "Atharva- 
Veda,"  completed  by  the  commentaries,  or 
"Brahmanas,"  and  the  philosophical  treatises 
known  as  "Aranyakas"  and  "Upanishads,"  to 
which  we  must  add  the  "Shastras,"  of  which 

12 


Prologue 

the  best  known  is  the  "Manava-Dharma- 
Shastra,"  or  "Laws  of  Manu" — which,  accord- 
ing to  William  Jones,  Chezy,  and  Loiseleur- 
Deslongchamps,  date  back  to  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury before  Christ — and  the  first  "Puranas." 

Of  these  texts  the  "Rig- Veda"  is  incontest- 
ably  the  most  ancient.  The  rest  are  spread 
over  a  period  of  many  hundreds,  perhaps  even 
of  many  thousands,  of  years;  but  all,  excepting 
the  latest  "Puranas,"  belong  to  the  pre-Chris- 
tian era,  a  fact  which  we  must  always  keep  in 
view;  not  because  of  any  feeling  of  hostility 
toward  the  great  religion  of  the  West,  but  in 
order  to  give  the  latter  its  proper  place  in  the 
history  and  evolution  of  human  thought. 

The  "Rig-Veda"  is  still  polytheist  rather 
than  pantheist,  and  it  is  only  here  and  there 
that  the  peaks  of  the  doctrine  emerge  from  it, 
as,  for  example,  in  the  stanzas  which  we  shall 
presently  quote.  Its  divinities  represent  only 
those  amplifical  physical  forces  which  the 
"Sama-Veda,"  and  above  all  the  "Brahmanas" 
subsequently  reduce  to  metaphysical  concep- 
tions, and  to  unity. 

The  "Sama-Veda"  asserts  the  unknowable 
and  the  "Yadjur-Veda"  pantheism.  As  for 
the  "Atharva,"  according  to  some  the  oldest, 
and  according  to  others  the  most  recent,  it 
consists  above  all  of  ritual. 

These  ideas  were  developed  by  the  commen- 
13 


The  Great  Secret 

taries  of  the  "Brahmanas,"  which  were  pro- 
duced more  especially  between  the  twelfth  and 
seventh  centuries  before  Christ;  but  they  may 
probably  be  referred  to  traditions  of  much 
greater  antiquity,  which  our  modern  theoso- 
phists  claim  to  have  rediscovered,  though  with- 
out supporting  their  assertions  by  sufficient 
proof. 

Consequently,  when  we  speak  of  the  religion 
of  India  we  must  consider  it  in  its  entirety,  from 
the  primitive  Vedism  by  way  of  Brahmanism 
and  Krishnaism,  to  Buddhism,  calling  a  halt, 
should  the  student  so  prefer,  some  two  or  three 
centuries  before  our  Christian  era,  in  order  to 
avoid  all  suspicion  of  Judo-Christian  infiltra- 
tion. 

All  this  literature — to  which  may  be  added, 
among  many  others,  the  semi-profane  texts  of 
the  "Ramayana"  and  the  "Mahabarata,"  in  the 
midst  of  which  blossoms  the  "Bhagavata-Gita," 
or  "Song  of  the  Blessed,"  that  magnificent 
flower  of  Hindu  mysticism — is  still  very  imper- 
fectly known,  and  we  possess  of  it  only  so  much 
as  the  Brahmans  have  chosen  to  give  us. 

This  literature  confronts  us  with  a  host  of 
problems  of  extreme  complexity,  of  which  very 
few  have  as  yet  been  solved.  It  may  be  added 
that  the  translation  of  the  Sanskrit  texts,  and 
especially  of  the  more  ancient,  are  still  very 
unreliable.  According  to  Roth,  the  true  pio- 


Prologue 

neer  of  Vedic  exegesis,  "the  translator  who 
will  render  the  'Veda'  intelligible  and  readable, 
mutatis  mutandis,  as  Homer  has  been  since  the 
labors  of  Voss,  has  yet  to  appear,  and  we  can 
hardly  anticipate  his  advent  before  the  coming 
century." 

In  order  to  form  some  idea  of  the  uncertain 
character  of  these  translations,  it  is  enough  to 
turn,  for  an  example,  to  the  end  of  the  third 
volume  of  the  Religion  Fedique  of  Bergaigne, 
the  great  French  Orientalist.  Here  we  shall 
find  the  disputes  which  arose  between  the  most 
famous  Indianists,  such  as  Grassmann  Ludwig, 
Roth  and  Bergaigne  himself,  as  to  the  inter- 
pretation of  almost  all  the  essential  words  of 
the  "Hymn  to  the  Dawn"  (I,  123).  As  Ber- 
gaigne says,  "It  exposes  the  poverty  of  the 
present  interpretation  of  the  'Rig-Veda.'  "  * 

The  neotheosophists  have  endeavored  to 
solve  certain  of  the  problems  propounded  by 
Hindu  antiquity;  but  their  works,  though  highly 
interesting  as  regards  their  doctrine,  are  ex- 
tremely weak  from  a  critical  point  of  view;  and 
it  is  impossible  to  follow  them  on  paths  where 
we  meet  with  nothing  but  hypotheses  incapable 
of  proof.  The  truth  is  that  in  dealing  with 
India  we  must  abandon  all  hope  of  chronolog- 
ical accuracy.  Contenting  ourselves  with  a 

1  La  Religion  Vedique  d'apres  les  Hymnes  du  Rig-Veda,  A. 
Bergaigne;  Vol.  III.  p.  283  et  seq. 

15 


The  Great  Secret 

minimum  of  certainty,  which  undoubtedly  falls 
far  short  of  reality,  and  leaving  behind  us  a 
possibly  stupendous  waste  of  nebulous  centuries, 
we  will  refer  only  to  the  three  or  four  thousand 
years  that  saw  the  birth  and  growth  of  the 
"Brahmanas";  when  we  find  that  there  existed 
at  that  period  among  the  foot-hills  of  the  Him- 
alayas, a  great  religion,  pantheist  and  agnostic, 
which  later  became  esoteric;  and  this,  for  the 
moment,  is  all  that  concerns  us. 

8 

And  what  of  Egypt?  some  will  say.  What 
of  her  monuments  and  her  hieroglyphics  ?  Are 
they  not  much  more  ancient?  Let  us  listen  in 
this  connection  to  the  learned  Egyptologist  Le 
Page  Renouf,  1  one  of  the  great  authorities  on 
this  subject.  He  holds  that  the  Egyptian  mon- 
uments and  their  inscriptions  cannot  serve  as 
a  basis  for  establishing  definite  dates;  that  the 
calculations  based  on  the  heliacal  rising  of  the 
stars  are  not  convincing,  as  in  the  texts  it  is 
probable  that  the  transit  of  the  stars  is  referred 
to  rather  than  their  rising.  He  is,  however, 
convinced  that  according  to  the  most  moderate 
calculations  the  Egyptian  monarchy  was  al- 
ready in  existence  more  than  two  thousand 
years  before  the  Book  of  Exodus  was  written. 

1  "Lectures  on  the  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion  as 
Illustrated  by  the  Religion  of  Ancient  Egypt,"  by  P.  Le  Page 
Renouf. 

16 


Prologue 

Now  Exodus  probably  dates  from  the  year  1310 
B.  c.,  and  the  date  of  the  Great  Pyramid  can- 
not be  fixed  at  less  than  3000  or  4000  years  be 
fore  our  era.  These  calculations,  like  those 
which  make  the  Chinese  era  begin  2697  years 
before  Christ,  lead  us  back  strangely  enough, 
to  the  period  assigned  by  the  students  of  Indian 
history  to  the  development  of  the  Vedic  ideal; 
a  development  which  presupposes  a  period  of 
gestation  and  formation  infinitely  more  remote. 
For  the  rest,  they  do  not  deny  that  the  Egyp- 
tian civilization,  like  the  Hindu  civilization, 
may  be  very  much  more  ancient.  Another 
great  Egyptologist,  Leonard  Homer,  between 
the  years  1851  and  1854,  had  ninety-five  shafts 
sunk  in  various  parts  of  the  Nile  Valley.  It 
is  established  that  the  Nile  increases  the  depth 
of  its  alluvial  bed  by  five  inches  in  a  century — 
a  depth  which  owing  to  compression  should  be 
less  for  the  lower  strata.  Human  and  animal 
figures  carved  in  granite,  mosaics,  and  vases, 
were  found  at  depths  of  seventy-five  feet  or 
less,  and  fragments  of  brick  and  pottery  at 
greater  depths.  This  takes  us  back  some 
17,000  or  18,000  years.  At  a  depth  of  thirty- 
three  feet  six  inches  a  tablet  was  unearthed,, 
bearing  inscriptions  which  a  simple  calculation 
shows  to  have  been  nearly  8000  years  old. 
The  theory  that  the  excavators  may  have  hit, 
Iiy  chance,  upon  wells  or  cisterns  must  be  aban- 

17 


The  Great  Secret 

doned,  for  the  same  state  of  affairs  was  proved 
to  exist  everywhere.  These  proofs,  it  may  be 
remarked,  furnish  yet  one  more  argument  in 
support  of  the  occultist  traditions  as  regards  the 
antiquity  of  human  civilization.  This  prodi- 
gious antiquity  is  also  confirmed  by  the  astro- 
nomical observations  of  the  ancients.  There  is, 
for  example,  a  catalogue  of  stars  known  as  the 
catalogue  of  Surya-Siddhanta;  and  the  differ- 
ences in  the  position  of  eight  of  these  fixed 
stars,  taken  at  random,  show  that  the  Surya- 
Siddhanta  were  made  more  than  58,000  years 
ago. 

9 

Was  Egypt  or  India  the  direct  legatee  of 
the  legendary  wisdom  bequeathed  by  more 
ancient  peoples,  and  notably  by  the  probable 
Atlantides?  In  the  present  state  of  our  knowl- 
edge, without  relying  upon  occultist  traditions, 
it  is  not  yet  possible  to  reply. 

Less  than  a  century  ago  virtually  nothing 
was  known  of  ancient  Egypt.  The  little  that 
was  known  was  based  upon  hearsay  and  the 
more  or  less  fantastic  legends  collected  by  later 
historians,  and  above  all  on  the  divagations  of 
the  philosophers  and  theurgists  of  the  Alexan- 
drian period.  It  was  only  in  1820  that  Jean- 
Frangois  Champollion,  thanks  to  the  threefold 
text  of  the  famous  Rosetta  Stone,  found  the 

18 


Prologue 

key  to  the  mysterious  writing  that  covers  all  the 
monuments,  all  the  tombs,  and  almost  every  ob- 
ject of  the  land  of  the  Pharaohs.  But  the 
working  out  of  the  discovery  was  a  long  and 
difficult  business,  and  it  was  almost  forty  years 
later  that  one  of  Champollion's  most  illustrious 
successors,  de  Rouge,  was  able  to  say  that  there 
was  no  longer  any  Egyptian  text  that  could  not 
be  translated.  Innumerable  documents  were 
deciphered  and  as  regards  the  material  sense 
of  most  of  the  inscriptions  an  all  but  absolute 
certainty  was  attained. 

Nevertheless  it  seems  more  and  more  prob- 
able that  beneath  the  literal  meaning  of  the  re- 
ligious inscriptions  another  and  an  impene- 
trable meaning  is  concealed.  This  is  the 
hypothesis  toward  which  the  most  objective  and 
most  scientific  Egyptologists  have  inevitably 
tended,  in  view  of  the  antiquity  of  many  of 
the  words  employed,  although  they  immediately 
add  that  it  cannot  be  definitely  confirmed.  It 
is  therefore  highly  probable  that  beneath  the 
official  religion  taught  to  the  vulgar,  there  was 
another  reserved  for  the  priests  and  the  initiate, 
and  here  the  theory  which  the  scholars  are  com- 
pelled to  entertain  once  more  confirms  the  asser- 
tions of  the  occultists,  and  notably  those  of  the 
Neoplatonists  of  Alexandria,  as  regards  the 
Egyptian  mysteries. 


The  Great  Secret 

10 

However  this  may  be,  there  are  texts  as  to 
whose  authenticity  there  is  not  the  slightest 
doubt — the  "Book  of  the  Dead,"  the  "Books  of 
Hymns,"  and  Ptahhoteph's  "Collection  of 
Moral  Sentences" — the  most  ancient  book  in 
the  world,  since  it  is  contemporary  with  the  pyr- 
amids— and  many  more,  which  enable  us  to 
form  a  very  exact  idea  of  the  (at  first)  lofty 
morality,  and  above  all  of  the  fundamental 
theosophy  of  Egypt,  before  this  theosophy  was 
corrupted  to  satisfy  the  common  people  and 
transformed  into  a  monstrous  polytheism, 
which,  for  that  matter,  was  always  more  ap- 
parent than  real. 

Now  the  older  these  texts  the  more  closely 
does  their  teaching  approximate  to  the  Hindu 
tradition.  Whether  they  are  in  fact  earlier  or 
later  than  the  latter  is  after  all  a  question  of 
secondary  importance;  what  interests  us  more 
deeply  is  the  problem  of  their  common  origin, 
a  sole  and  immemorial  origin  whose  probabil- 
ity increases  with  every  step  adventured  into 
the  prehistoric  ages. 

The  farther  back  we  go  the  more  plainly  is 
this  agreement  upon  the  essential  points  re- 
vealed. For  example  the  ideal  which  the  Egyp- 
tian religion,  in  its  beginnings,  conceived  of 
God.  We  shall  find  a  little  farther  on  the 

20 


Prologue 

Hindu  original  or  replica,  just  as  we  shall  have 
occasion  to  compare  the  two  theogonies,  the 
two  cosmogonies,  the  two  systems  of  ethics, 
which  are  evidently  the  sources  of  all  the  theo- 
gonies, all  the  cosmogonies,  and  all  the  ethical 
systems  of  humanity. 

For  the  Egyptian  who  has  preserved  the 
faith  of  the  earliest  days  there  is  only  one  sole 
God.  "There  is  none  other  God  than  He." 
"He  is  the  sole  living  Being  in  substance  and  in 
truth."  "Thou  art  alone  and  millions  of  liv- 
ing beings  proceed  from  Thee."  "He  hath 
created  all  things,  and  He  alone  is  uncreated." 
"In  all  times  and  places,  He  is  the  sole  sub- 
stance and  is  unapproachable."  "He  is  One, 
the  only  One."  "He  is  yesterday,  to-day,  and 
to-morrow."  "He  is  God  by  God  created, 
existing  of  Himself — the  twofold  Being,  self- 
begotten,  the  Begetter  of  all  since  the  begin- 
ning." 

"It  is  more  than  five  thousand  years," — says 
de  Rouge,  "since  men  first  sang  in  the  valley  of 
the  Nile  the  hymn  to  the  unity  of  God  and  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  ...  In  this  belief  in 
the  unity  of  the  Supreme  God  and  His  attri- 
butes as  Creator  of  and  Lawgiver  to  Man, 
whom  he  endowed  with  an  immortal  soul,  we 
have  the  primitive  conceptions,  encrusted  like 
indestructible  diamonds  in  the  mythological 

21 


The  Great  Secret 

superfetations  accumulated  by  the  centuries 
which  have  passed  over  this  ancient  civili- 
zation." 1 

It  is  true  that  we  have  not  here,  in  this  def- 
inition of  the  Deity,  the  penetration  and  sub- 
tlety, the  metaphysical  spaciousness,  the  hap- 
piness of  expression,  the  verbal  magnificence — 
in  a  word,  the  genius, — which  we  shall  find  in 
the  Hindu  definitions.  The  Egyptian  temper- 
ament is  colder,  drier,  more  sober,  less  grace- 
ful, more  realistic;  it  has  a  more  concrete  im- 
agination, which  is  not  fired  by  the  inaccessible, 
the  infinite,  as  is  the  spirit  of  the  Asiatic 
peoples.  Moreover,  we  must  not  lose  sight 
of  the  fact  that  we  are  not  yet  acquainted  with 
the  secret  meaning  which  may  lie  hidden  be- 
neath these  definitions.  But  at  all  events,  as 
we  understand  them,  the  idea  expressed  is  the 
same,  denoting  a  single  origin  which,  in  con- 
formity with  esoteric  tradition  and  pending 
further  enlightenment,  we  may  call  the  Atlan- 
tean  idea.  This  supposition,  incidentally,  is 
confirmed  by  the  famous  passage  in  Timaeus, 
according  to  which,  as  is  stated  by  the  Egyp- 
tian priest  speaking  to  Solon,  Egypt  twelve 
thousand  years  ago,  had  an  Atlantean  col- 
ony. 

1  De  Rouge,  Annales  de  la  Philosophic  Chrttienne;  Vol. 
XX,  p.  327. 

22 


Prologue 

ii 

As  for  Mazdeism  or  Zoroastrianism,  the 
third  of  the  great  religions,  the  problem  of  its 
derivation  is  a  simpler  one,  although  that  of  its 
chronology  is  equally  complicated.  Zoroaster, 
or  rather  one  of  the  Zoroasters — the  last  of 
them, — lived,  according  to  Aristotle,  in  the 
seventh  century  before  Christ.  Pliny  places 
him  a  thousand  years  before  Moses,  and  Her- 
mippus  of  Smyrna,  who  translated  his  works 
into  Greek,  four  thousand  years  before  the 
fall  of  Troy,  and  Eudoxius  six  thousand  years 
before  the  death  of  Plato. 

Modern  science,  as  Edouard  Schure  has  dem- 
onstrated, deriving  his  proofs  from  the  schol- 
arly research  of  Eugene  Burnouf,  Spiegel, 
James  Darmesteter,  and  Harlez,  declares  that 
it  is  not  possible  to  determine  the  period  of 
the  great  Iranian  philosopher  who  wrote  the 
"Zend-Avesta";  but  in  any  case  he  places  him 
2500  years  B.  c.  Max  Miiller,  on  the  other 
hand,  gives  us  proof  that  Zoroaster,  or  Zara- 
thustra,  and  his  disciples  lived  in  India.  "Some 
of  the  Zoroastrian  gods,"  he  says,  "are  only  re- 
flections, distortions,  of  the  primitive  and  au- 
thentic gods  of  the  'Vedas.'  * 

Here,  then,  there  is  not  the  slightest  doubt 
as  to  the  priority  of  the  Hindu  books,  and 

23 


The  Great  Secret 

here  at  the  same  time  is  yet  another  confirma- 
tion of  the  fabulous  antiquity  of  these  books 
or  traditions. 

These  preliminary  observations,  which  would 
require  volumes  for  their  exposition,  arc 
enough — and  for  the  moment  it  is  this  that 
concerns  us — to  prove  that  the  teaching  which 
we  find,  in  the  after  ages,  at  the  bottom  of  all 
the  religions,  in  the  shape  of  mysteries,  initia- 
tions, and  secret  doctrines,  dates,  according  to 
the  most  cautious  calculations,  from  thousands 
of  years  ago.  They  will  suffice,  at  all  events, 
to  dispel  the  somewhat  puerile  argument  of 
those  who  maintain  that  it  is  comparatively 
recent  and  has  been  influenced  by  the  Judo- 
Christian  revelations.  This  argument  is  no 
longer  seriously  maintained,  but  there  are  those 
who  evade  the  difficulty  by  saying:  Yes,  there 
are  truths  in  this  primitive  religion,  and  even 
texts  which  can  be  more  or  less  definitely  dated, 
antecedent  to  Moses  and  to  Christ;  but  who  can 
sift  from  these  the  successive  interpolations 
which  have  transformed  them? 

There  are  in  India,  it  appears,  more  than 
twelve  hundred  texts  of  the  "Vedas"  and  more 
than  350  of  the  "Laws  of  Manu,"  to  say  noth- 
ing of  those  of  the  sacred  books  which  the 
Brahmans  have  not  surrendered  to  us;  and  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  there  are  obvious  inter- 
polations in  these  texts  and  in  the  doctrines 

2.4 


Prologue 

which  they  contain.  We  must  never  lose  sight 
of  the  fact  that  the  Oriental  religion  which  is 
commonly  and  most  improperly  known  as  Bud- 
dhism  falls  into  three  great  periods,  which 
correspond  pretty  closely  with  the  three  periods 
into  which  Christianity  might  be  divided; 
namely,  Vedism,  or  the  primitive  religion,  which 
the  Brahmans  commented  upon,  complicating  it 
and  corrupting  it  to  their  own  advantage,  until 
it  became  the  Brahmanism  which  Siddhartha 
Gautama  Buddha,  or  Sakyamuni,  revolted 
against  and  reformed  in  the  fifth  century 
B.  C. 

The  Indianists,  thanks  above  all  to  the  his- 
torical landmarks  afforded  them  by  the  caste 
system,  and  the  changes  of  language  and  of 
meter,  have  learned  to  distinguish  easily  enough 
these  three  currents  in  the  suspect  texts,  and 
beneath  the  luxuriance  and  complications  of  the 
interpolations  the  broad  outlines  and  essential 
truths  which  are  all  that  matter  to  us  are 
always  visible. 


CHAPTER  II 

INDIA 


LET  us  first  of  all  consider  the  conception 
of  Deity  which  was  formed  by  these  an- 
cestors, simultaneously  with  the  Egyptians,  or, 
as  is  much  more  probable,  before  them.  Their 
traditions  may  lay  claim  to  at  least  five  or  six 
thousand  years,  and  they  themselves  received 
these  traditions  from  peoples  who  to-day  have 
disappeared,  their  last  trace  in  the  memory  of 
man  dating  back,  according  to  Timaeus  and  the 
"Critias"  of  Plato,  one  hundred  and  twenty 
centuries. 

I  must  a'pologize  to  the  reader  for  the  inex- 
tricable nomenclature  of  Oriental  mythology 
and  the  multiplicity  of  those  anthropomorphic 
divinities  whom  the  priests  of  India,  like  those 
of  Egypt  and  of  Persia,  and  indeed  of  all 
times  and  countries,  were  compelled  to  create 
in  order  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  popular 
idolatry.  I  shall  also  spare  him  the  ostenta- 
tion of  a  facile  scholarship,  lavish  of  unpro- 
nounceable names,  in  order  at  once  to  proceed 
to  and  consider  only  the  essential  conception  of 
the  First  Cause,  as  we  find  it  in  the  remotest 

26 


India 

sources,  which,  if  not  withheld  from  the  com- 
mon people,  ceased  gradually  to  be  under- 
stood by  them,  until  it  became  the  Great  Se- 
cret of  the  elect  among  the  priests  and  initi- 
ates. 

Let  us  at  once  give  ear  to  the  "Rig-Veda," 
the  most  authentic  echo  of  the  most  immemo- 
rial traditions;  let  us  note  how  it  approaches 
the  formidable  problem: 

"There  was  neither  Being  nor  non-Being. 
There  was  neither  atmosphere  nor  heavens 
above  the  atmosphere.  What  moved  and 
whither?  And  in  whose  care?  Were  there 
waters,  and  the  bottomless  deep? 

"There  was  then  neither  death  nor  immor- 
tality. The  day  was  not  divided  from  the 
night.  Only  the  One  breathed,  in  Himself, 
without  extraneous  breath,  and  apart  from  Him 
there  was  nothing. 

"Then  for  the  first  time  desire  awoke  within 
Him;  this  was  the  first  seed  of  the  Spirit.  The 
sages,  full  of  understanding,  striving  within 
their  hearts,  discovered  in  non-Being  the  link 
with  Being. 

"Who  knoweth  and  who  can  tell  where  crea- 
tion was  born,  whence  it  came,  and  whether 
the  gods  were  not  born  afterwards?  Who 
knoweth  whence  it  hath  come? 

"Whence  this  creation  hath  come,  whether 
it  be  created  or  uncreated,  He  whose  eye 

27 


The  Great  Secret 

watches  over  it  from  the  highest  heaven,  He 
alone  knoweth:  and  yet  doth  He  know?"  * 

Is  it  possible  to  find,  in  our  human  annals, 
words  more  majestic,  more  full  of  solemn  an- 
guish, more  august  in  tone,  more  devout,  more 
terrible?  Where  could  we  find  at  the  very 
foundation  of  life,  a  completer  and  more  ir- 
reducible confession  of  ignorance?  Where, 
from  the  depths  of  our  agnosticism,  which 
thousands  of  years  have  augmented,  can  we 
point  to  a  wider  horizon?  At  the  very  outset 
it  surpasses  all  that  has  been  said,  and  goes  far- 
ther than  we  shall  ever  dare  to  go,  lest  we  fall 
into  despair,  for  it  does  not  fear  to  ask  itself 
whether  the  Supreme  Being  knows  what  He 
has  done — knows  whether  He  is  or  is  not  the 
Creator,  and  questions  whether  He  has  become 
conscious  of  Himself. 


Now  let  us  hear  the  "Sama-Veda,"  confirming 
and  elucidating  this  magnificent  confession  of 
ignorance : 

"If  thou  sayest,  'I  have  perfect  knowledge  of 
the  Supreme  Being,'  thou  deceivest  thyself,  for 
who  shall  number  His  attributes?  If  thou 
sayest,  'I  think  I  know  Him;  I  do  not  think  I 
know  Him  perfectly,  nor  that  I  do  not  know 
Him  at  all ;  but  I  know  Him  in  part ;  for  he  who 

i  "Rig-Veda";  X,   129. 

28 


India 

knows  all  the  manifestations  of  the  gods  who 
proceed  from  Him  knows  the  Supreme  Being' ; 
if  thou  sayest  this,  thou  deceivest  thyself,  for 
not  to  be  wholly  ignorant  of  Him  is  not  to 
know  Him. 

"He,  on  the  contrary,  who  believes  that  ha 
does  not  know  Him,  is  he  that  does  know  Him; 
and  he  who  believes  that  he  knows  Him  is  he 
that  does  not  know  Him.  Those  who  know 
Him  best  regard  Him  as  incomprehensible  and 
those  who  know  nothing  at  all  of  Him  be- 
lieve that  they  know  Him  perfectly." 

To  this  fundamental  agnosticism  the  "Yad- 
jur  Veda"  brings  its  absolute  pantheism: 

"The  sage  fixes  his  eyes  upon  this  mysterious 
Being  in  whom  the  universe  perpetually  ex- 
ists, for  it  has  no  other  foundation.  In  Him 
this  world  is  contained;  it  is  from  Him  that 
this  world  has  issued.  He  is  entwined  and  en- 
woven  in  all  created  things,  under  all  the  va- 
ried forms  of  life. 

"This  sole  Being,  to  whom  nothing  can  at- 
tain, is  swifter  than  thought;  and  the  gods 
themselves  cannot  comprehend  this  Supreme 
Mover  who  has  preceded  them  all.  He  is 
remote  from  all  things  and  close  at  hand.  He 
fills  the  entire  universe,  yet  infinitely  surpasses 
it. 

"When  man  has  learned  to  behold  all  crea- 
tures in  this  Supreme  Spirit,  and  his  Supreme 

29 


The  Great  Secret 

Spirit  in  all  His  creatures,  he  can  no  longer" 
despise  anything  whatsoever. 

"Those  who  refuse  to  believe  in  the  iden- 
tity of  all  created  things  have  fallen  into  a  pro- 
found darkness ;  those  who  believe  only  in  their 
individual  selves  have  fallen  into  a  much  pro- 
founder  darkness. 

"He  who  believes  in  the  eternal  identity  of 
created  beings  wins  immortality. 

"All  creatures  exist  in  this  Supreme  Spirit, 
and  this  Supreme  Spirit  exists  in  all  creatures. 

"All  creatures  appear  to  Him  as  they  have 
been  from  all  eternity,  always  resembling 
themselves." 

3 

Our  ancestors  did  their  best  thoroughly  to 
examine  this  tremendous  confession  of  ignor- 
ance, to  people  this  abysmal  void,  in  which  man 
could  not  draw  breath;  and  sought  to  define 
this  Supreme  Being,  whom  a  tradition  more 
prehistoric  than  themselves  had  not  ventured 
to  conceive.  No  spectacle  could  be  more  ab- 
sorbing than  this  struggle  of  our  forefathers  of 
five  to  ten  thousand  years  ago  with  the  Un- 
knowable ;  and  in  order  to  convey  some  idea  of 
this  struggle,  I  shall  borrow  their  own  voices, 
reproducing  only  the  almost  despairing  terms 
by  which  they  expressed  themselves  in  the  most 
ancient  and  authentic  of  their  sacred  books, 

30 


India 

which  we  must  read  without  allowing  ourselves 
to  be  alarmed  by  that  incoherence  of  the  Images 
employed  which  is,  as  Bergaigne  remarks,  the 
daily  bread  of  Vedic  poetry, 

God,  they  tell  us,  is  Being.  He  is  all  things, 
existing  and  in  Himself;  unknowable,  and  the 
cause  without  a  cause  of  all  causes.  He  is 
infinitely  ancient,  infinitely  unknown.  He  is  all 
things  and  in  all  things,  the  eternal  soul  of  all 
created  beings,  whom  no  one  can  comprehend. 
He  is  the  unification  of  all  material,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral  forms  of  all  existing  be- 
ings. He  is  the  sole  primordial  germ,  undis- 
closed by  all,  the  unknown  deep,  the  uncreated 
substance  of  the  unknown.  "No,  No,  is  His 
name" ;  and  all  things  waver  perpetually  be- 
tween "All  things  are"  and  "Nothing  exists." 
"The  sea  alone  knows  the  depths  of  the  sea; 
space  alone  knows  the  extent  of  space;  God 
alone  can  know  God."  He  contains  all  things, 
yet  is  unknown  to  all;  He  is  non-existent  be- 
cause He  is  absolute  Being — that  which  is  noth- 
ing while  it  is  nevertheless  all  things.  "He 
who  is,  yet  is  not,  the  eternal  cause  that  is  non- 
existent; the  Undiscovered  and  the  Undiscover- 
able,  whom  no  created  being  can  understand," 
says  Manu.  He  is  no  definite  thing;  He  is  no 
known  or  visible  being,  nor  can  we  bestow  upon 
Him  the  name  of  any  object.  He  is  the  secret 
of  all  secrets;  He  is  It,  the  passive  and  latent 

3i 


The  Great  Secret 

element.  The  world  is  His  name,  His  image; 
but  it  is  only  His  former  existence,  which  con- 
tains all  things  in  itself,  that  is  actually  exist- 
ent. This  universe  is  He;  it  comes  from  Him, 
it  returns  to  Him.  All  the  worlds  are  one 
with  Him,  for  they  exist  only  by  His  will;  an 
everlasting  will,  inborn  in  all  created  things. 
This  will  is  revealed  in  what  we  call  the  crea- 
tion, preservation,  and  destruction  of  the  uni- 
verse; but  there  is  no  creation  properly  so- 
called,  for,  since  all  things  have  from  all  time 
existed  in  Him,  creation  is  but  an  emanation 
of  that  which  is  in  Him.  This  emanation, 
merely  renders  -visible  to  our  eyes  what  was 
not  visible.  Similarly  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  destruction,  this  being  but  an  inhalation  of 
that  which  has  been  exhaled;  and  this  inhala- 
tion, in  its  turn,  does  no  more  than  render  in- 
visible that  which  was  aforetime  seen;  for  all 
things  are  indestructible,  being  merely  the  sub- 
stance of  the  Supreme  Being  who  Himself 
has  neither  beginning  nor  end,  whether  in  space 
or  in  time. 

4 

To  have  explored  thus  profoundly  and  com- 
prehensively, since  what  our  ignorance  calls 
the  beginning,  the  infinite  mystery  of  the  un- 
knowable First  Cause,  must  obviously  presup- 
pose a  civilization,  an  accumulation  of  ideas 

32 


India 

and  meditations,  an  experience,  a  degree  of 
contemplation  and  a  perception  of  the  universe, 
which  are  well  calculated  to  amaze  and  hu- 
miliate us.  We  are  now  barely  regaining  the 
heights  whence  these  ideas  have  come  down 
to  us — ideas  in  which  pantheism  and  mono- 
theism are  confounded,  forming  only  a  single 
complex  in  the  incommensurable  Unknown. 
And  who  knows  whether  we  could  have  recov- 
ered them  without  their  aid?  Less  than  a  cen- 
tury ago  we  still  knew  nothing  of  these  defini- 
tions in  their  original  majesty  and  lucidity; 
but  they  had  spread  in  all  directions,  and  were 
floating  like  wreckage  on  the  subterranean 
waters  of  all  the  religions,  and  above  all  on 
those  of  the  official  religion  of  Egypt,  in  which 
the  Nu  is  as  unknowable  as  the  Hindu  It,  and 
in  which,  according  to  the  occultist  tradition, 
the  supreme  revelation  at  the  close  of  the  final 
initiation  consisted  of  these  terrible  words, 
dropped  casually  into  the  ears  of  the  adept: 
"Osirh  is  a  dark  god!"  that  is,  a  god  who  can- 
not be  understood,  who  will  never  be  under- 
stood. They  were  found,  likewise,  adrift  in 
the  Bible;  or  if  not  in  the  Vulgate,  in  which 
they  become  unrecognizable,  at  least  in  the  ver- 
sions of  the  Hebraizers,  such  as  Fabre  d'Olivet, 
who  have  restored  its  actual  meaning,  or  be- 
lieve themselves  to  have  done  so.  Fitfully,  too, 
they  showed  beneath  the  mysteries  of  Greece, 

33 


The  Great  Secret 

which  were  merely  a  pale  and  distorted  repro- 
duction of  the  Egyptian  mysteries.  They  were 
visible,  too,  though  nearer  the  surface,  beneath 
the  doctrines  of  the  Essenes,  who,  according  to 
Pliny,  had  lived  for  thousands  of  centuries  by 
the  shores  of  the  Dead  Sea :  vPer  saculorum 
millia,"  which  is  obviously  exaggerated.  They 
drifted  through  the  cabala,  the  tradition  of 
the  ancient  Hebrew  initiates,  who  claimed  to 
have  preserved  the  oral  law  which  God  gave  to 
Moses  on  Sinai  and  which,  passing  from  mouth 
to  mouth,  were  written  down  by  the  learned 
rabbis  of  the  middle  ages.  They  might  be 
glimpsed  behind  the  extraordinary  doctrines 
and  dreams  of  the  Gnostics,  the  probable  heirs 
of  the  undiscoverable  Essenes;  beneath  the 
teachings  of  the  Neoplatonists,  and  those  of 
the  early  Christians;  as  in  the  darkness  in  which 
the  unhappy  medieval  Hermetics  lost  their  way, 
amid  texts  which  bear  the  marks  of  an  ever- 
increasing  mutilation  and  corruption,  following 
gleams  of  light  that  grew  more  and  more  per- 
ilous and  uncertain. 

5 

Here,  then,  is  a  great  truth;  the  first  of 
all  truths,  the  fundamental  truth,  that  lies  at 
the  root  of  things,  to  which  we  have  now  re- 
turned; the  unknowable  nature  of  the  causeless 
cause  of  all  causes.  But  of  this  cause,  or  this 

34 


India 

God,  we  should  never  have  known  anything  had 
He  remained  self-absorbed,  had  He  never  mani- 
fested Himself.  It  was  necessary  that  He 
should  emerge  from  His  inactivity,  which  for 
us  was  equivalent  to  nothingness,  since  the  uni- 
verse seems  to  exist,  and  we  ourselves  believe 
that  we  live,  in  Him.  Freed  from  the  creeper- 
like  entanglements  of  the  theogonic  and  theo- 
logical theories  that  quickly  invaded  it  on  every 
hand,  the  First  Cause,  or  rather  the  Eternal 
Cause — for  having  no  beginning  it  can  be 
neither  first  nor  second, — has  never  created 
anything.  There  was  no  creation,  since  all 
has  existed,  within  this  Cause,  from  all  eternity, 
in  a  form  invisible  to  our  eyes,  but  more  real 
than  it  could  be  if  they  beheld  it,  since  our  eyes 
are  so  fashioned  as  to  behold  illusions  only. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  this  illusion,  this  all, 
that  exists  always,  appears  or  disappears  in  ac- 
cordance with  an  eternal  rhythm  beaten  out  by 
the  sleeping  and  waking  of  the  Eternal  Cause. 
"Thus  it  is,"  say  the  "Laws  of  Manu,"  "that  by 
an  alternation  of  awakening  and  repose  the  im- 
mutable Being  causes  all  this  assemblage  of 
creatures,  mobile  and  immobile,  eternally  to  re- 
turn to  life  and  to  die."  1  He  exhales  himself, 
or  expels  his  breath,  and  spirit  descends  into 
matter,  which  is  only  a  visible  form  of  spirit; 
and  throughout  the  universe  innumerable 

1  "Laws  of  Manu" ;  I,  57. 

35 


The  Great  Secret 

worlds  are  born,  multiply  and  evolve.  He  him- 
self inhales,  indrawing  his  breath,  and  matter 
enters  into  spirit,  which  is  but  an  invisible  form 
of  matter:  and  the  worlds  disappear,  without 
perishing,  to  reintegrate  the  Eternal  Cause,  and 
emerge  once  more  upon  the  awakening  of  Brah- 
ma— that  is,  thousands  of  millions  of  years 
later;  to  enter  into  Him  again  when  He  sleeps 
once  more,  after  thousands  of  millions  of  years; 
and  so  it  has  been  and  ever  shall  be,  through 
all  eternity,  without  beginning,  without  cessa- 
tion, and  without  end. 


Here  again  we  have  a  tremendous  confession 
of  ignorance;  and  this  new  confession,  the  old- 
est of  all,  however  far  back  we  go,  is  also  the 
most  profound,  the  most  complete,  and  the 
most  impressive.  This  explanation  of  the  in- 
comprehensible universe,  which  explains  noth- 
ing, since  one  cannot  explain  the  inexplicable,  is 
more  acceptable  than  any  other  that  we  could 
offer,  and  is  perhaps  the  only  one  that  we  could 
accept  without  stumbling  at  every  step  over 
insurmountable  objections  and  questions  to 
which  our  reason  gives  no  reply. 

This  second  admission  we  find  at  the  origin  of 
the  two  mother-faiths.  In  Egypt,  even  in  the 
superficial  and  exoteric  Egypt  which  is  all  that 
we  know,  and  without  taking  into  account  the 

36 


India 

secret  meaning  which  probably  underlies  the 
hieroglyphs,  it  assumes  a  similar  form.  Here, 
too,  there  is  no  creation  properly  so  called,  but 
the  externalization  of  a  latent  and  everlasting 
spiritual  principle.  All  beings  and  all  things 
exist  from  all  eternity  in  the  Nu  and  return 
thither  after  death.  The  Nu  is  the  "deep"  of 
Genesis,  a  divine  spirit  hovers  above  it  vaguely, 
bearing  within  it  the  total  sum  of  future  exist- 
ences; whence  its  name,  Turn,  whose  meaning  is 
at  once  Nothingness  and  Totality.  When  Turn 
wished  to  create  within  his  heart  all  that  exists, 
he  rose  up  amid  what  things  were  present 
in  the  Nu,  outside  the  Nu,  and  all  lifeless 
things:  and  the  sun,  Ra,  was,  and  there  was 
light.  But  there  were  not  three  gods — the 
deep,  the  spirit  in  the  deep,  and  light  without 
the  deep.  Turn,  exteriorized  by  virtue  of  his 
creative  desire,  became  Ra  the  sun-god,  without 
ceasing  to  be  Turn  and  without  ceasing  to  be  Nu. 
He  says  of  himself:  "I  am  Turn;  I  am  that 
which  existed  alone  in  the  abyss.  I  am  the 
great  God,  self-created;  that  is,  I  am  Nu,  the 
father  of  the  gods."  He  is  the  total  sum  of 
the  lives  of  all  created  beings.  And  to  express 
the  idea  that  the  demiurge  has  created  all 
things  of  his  own  essence,  the  famous  Leyden 
papyrus  explains:  "There  was  no  other  God 
before  Him,  nor  any  beside  Him;  when  He 
decreed  His  likeness,  there  was  no  mother  for 

37 


The  Great  Secret 

Him,  who  was  self-named  [in  Egyptian  naming 
is  equivalent  to  creating]  :  no  father  for  Him 
who  uttered  this  name,  saying:  'It  is  I  who 
have  created  thee.'  "  x 

In  order  to  create,  the  Egyptian  first  thinks 
and  then  utters  the  world.  (Here  already  is 
the  "Word,"  the  famous  Logos  of  the  Alex- 
andrian philosophers,  which  we  shall  encounter 
again  later  on.)  His  supreme  intelligence  as- 
sumes the  name  of  Phtah;  his  heart,  which  is 
the  spirit  that  moves  him,  is  Horus,  and  the 
Word,  the  instrument  of  creation,  is  Thoth. 
Thus  we  have  Phtah-Horus-Thoth ;  the  Creator 
Spirit-Word,  the  trinity  in  unity  of  Turn.  Sub- 
sequently, as  in  the  Vedic,  Persian,  and  Chal- 
dean religions,  the  supreme  and  unknowable 
Deity  was  gradually  relegated  to  oblivion,  and 
we  hear  only  of  his  innumerable  emanations, 
whose  names  vary  from  century  to  century  and 
occasionally  from  city  to  city.  Thus,  in  the 
"Book  of  the  Dead,"  Osiris,  who  becomes  the 
best-known  god  of  Egypt,  states  that  he  is  Turn. 

In  Mazdeism,  or  Zoroastrianism,  which  is 
merely  an  adaptation  of  Vedism  to  the  Iranian 
temperament,  the  supreme  Deity  is  not  the  om- 
nipotent Creator  who  could  fashion  the  world 
as  he  desired;  he  is  subject  to  the  inflexible  laws 
of  the  unknown  First  Cause,  which  is  perhaps 

1  See  A.  Moret,  Les  Mysteres  Egyptiens;  pp.  no  ft  seq.; 
and  Pierret,  Etudes  Egyptologigues;  p.  414. 

38 


India 

himself.  In  Chaldea,  that  crossroads  where 
the  religions  of  India,  Egypt,  and  Persia  meet, 
matter  self-existent  and  still  uncreated,  gives 
birth  to  all  things;  not  creating  because  all 
things  have  their  being  in  it,  but  manifesting 
itself  periodically,  when  its  image  is  reflected 
in  the  world  visible  to  our  eyes.  In  the  Cabala 
the  last  echo,  the  blurred  copy  of  the  esoteric 
doctrines  of  Chaldea  and  Egypt,  we  find  the 
same  confusion;  the  Eternal  Spirit,  increate  and 
unknowable,  not  understood  in  its  pure  essence, 
contains  in  itself  the  principle  of  all  that  exists, 
manifesting  itself  and  becoming  visible  to  man 
only  by  its  emanations. 

Lastly,  if  we  open  the  Bible — not  its  re- 
stricted, superficial,  and  empirical  translation, 
but  a  version  which  goes  to  the  heart  -of  the  in- 
ner meaning,  essential  and  radical,  of  the  He- 
brew words  such  as  that  which  Fabre  d'Olivet 
attempted, — we  find,  in  the  first  verse  of  Gene- 
sis: "In  the  first  beginning  which  is  to  say  be- 
fore all,  He,  Elohim,  God  of  Gods,  the  exist- 
ing Being,  created — which  does  not  mean  made 
something  out  of  nothing,  but  drew  from  an  un- 
known element,  caused  to  pass  from  its  princi- 
ple to  its  essence,  the  Very  Self  of  the  heavens 
and  the  Very  Self  of  earth." 

"And  the  earth  existed,  a  contingent  power 
of  being  in  the  dominion  of  being,  and  the 
darkness  (a  compressive  and  indurating  force) 

39 


The  Great  Secret 

was  over  the  face  of  the  deep  (the  universal 
and  contingent  power  of  being)  ;  and  the  breath 
of  the  God  of  Gods  (an  expansive  and  dilating 
force)  moved  with  generative  power  upon  the 
face  of  the  waters  (universal  passivity)."  * 

Is  it  not  interesting  to  note  that  this  literal 
translation  brings  us  very  close  to  India,  to  the 
idea  of  the  unknown  origin,  and  closer  still  to 
the  Hindu  creation;  the  passing  from  princi- 
ple to  essence,  the  expansion  of  the  Being  of 
Beings  who  contains  all  things,  and^  of  the  ex- 
ternalization,  upon  his  awakening,  of  the  power 
that  was  latent  within  him  during  his  sleep? 
Let  us  remember  that  in  1875  Max  Miiller 
wrote,  "Fifty  years  ago  there  was  not  a  single 
scholar  who  could  translate  a  line  of  the 
'Veda.' '  We  must  therefore  believe,  despite 
the  assertion  of  the  great  Orientalist,  either 
that  Fabre  d'Olivet  was  capable  of  translating 
it,  or  that  he  had  divined  the  spirit  of  it  in  the' 
traditions  of  the  cabala,  which  he  could  not 
have  known  save  for  the  very  incomplete  and 
inaccurate  Kabbala  Denudata  of  Rosenroth;  or 
else  that  the  Hebrew  text,  if  it  really  says  what 
he  makes  it  say,  as  everything  seems  to  prove, 
reproduces  the  Hindu  sources  in  a  singular 
fashion,  for  his  translation,  the  fruit  of  long 
previous  labors,  appeared  in  1815;  that  is,  ten 

1  Fabre  d'Olivet,  La  Langue  Lebraique  restitute;  Vol.  II, 
pp.  25-27. 

40 


India 

or  twenty  years  before  any  one  had  learned  to 
read  Sanskrit  and  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphs. 


Is  it  possible  to-day,  with  all  that  we  believe 
we  know,  or  rather  with  all  that  we  have  at 
last  realized  that  we  do  not  know,  to  give  a 
more  comprehensive,  more  profoundly  nega- 
tive idea  of  divinity  than  that  conveyed  by  these 
religions  at  the  beginnings  of  the  human  race, 
or  one  that  corresponds  more  closely  with  the 
vast  and  hopeless  ignorance  which  will  always 
characterize  our  discussions  as  to  the  First 
Cause?  Do  we  not  find  ourselves  now  at  an 
enormous  height  above  the  more  or  less  anthro- 
pomorphic gods  that  followed  the  supreme 
Unknowable  of  that  religion  which  was  the 
misappreciated  mother  of  all  the  rest?  Is  it 
not  to  her  nameless  enigma  that  we  are  return- 
ing at  long  last,  after  all  our  protracted 
wanderings;  after  wasting  so  much  energy  and 
so  many  centuries,  after  committing  so  many 
errors,  so  many  crimes,  in  seeking  for  her 
where  she  was  not,  far  from  the  aboriginal 
summits  on  which  she  has  awaited  us  for  so 
many  thousands  and  thousands  of  years? 

8 

But  this  admission  of  ignorance  had  to  be 
embellished  and  peopled;  the  fathomless  gulf 

41 


The  Great  Secret 

had  to  be  filled;  an  abstraction  which  surpassed 
the  bounds  of  understanding,  with  which  man- 
kind could  never  be  content,  had  to  be  quick- 
ened into  life.  And  this  all  religions  endea- 
vored to  accomplish,  beginning  with  that  one 
which  first  made  the  venture. 

Once  more  I  brush  aside  the  brambles  of  the 
theogonies,  simple  at  their  origin  but  soon  in- 
extricable, to  follow  the  broad  outlines.  In 
the  primitive  religion,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
the  unknown  Cause,  at  a  given  moment  of  the 
infinity  of  time,  beginning  once  more  what  it 
has  done  from  all  eternity,  awakes,  divides  it- 
self, becomes  objective,  is  reflected  in  the  uni- 
versal passivity,  and  becomes,  until  its  approach- 
ing slumber,  our  visible  universe.  Of  this  un- 
known self-existent  cause  which  divides  itself 
into  two  parts,  to  render  visible  that  which  was 
latent  in  it,  are  born  Brahma  or  Nara,  the 
father,  and  Nari,  the  universal  mother,  of 
whom  is  born  in  his  turn  Viradj,  the  son,  the 
universe.  This  primitive  triad,  assuming  a 
more  anthropomorphic  form,  becomes  Brahma, 
the  creator,  Vishnu,  the  preserver,  and  Shiva, 
the  destroyer  and  regenerator.  In  Egypt  we 
have  Nu,  Turn,  and  Ra;  then  Phtah,  Horus, 
and  Thoth;  who  then  became  Osiris,  Isis,  and 
Horus. 

After  these  first  subdivisions  of  the  unknown 
Cause  the  primeval  Pantheons  are  filled  by  the 

42 


India 

serried  hosts  of  gods  who  are  merely  intermit- 
tent emanations,  transitory  representatives, 
ephemeral  offshoots  of  the  First  Cause;  person- 
ifications, more  and  more  human,  of  its  mani- 
festations, its  purposes,  its  attributes  or  powers. 
We  need  not  examine  these  here,  but  it  is  in- 
teresting to  note,  in  passing,  the  profound 
truths  which  these  immemorial  cosmogonies 
and  theogonies  almost  always  discover,  and 
which  are  gradually  being  confirmed  by  sci- 
ence. Was  it,  for  example,  mere  chance  that 
decreed  that  the  earth  should  proceed  from 
chaos,  take  shape  and  be  covered  with  life  pre- 
cisely in  the  order  which  they  describe?  Ac- 
cording to  the  "Laws  of  Manu"  the  ether  en- 
genders the  atmosphere ;  the  atmosphere,  trans- 
forming itself,  engenders  light;  the  atmos- 
phere and  light,  giving  rise  to  heat,  produce 
water;  and  water  is  the  mother  of  all  living 
creatures.  "When  this  world  had  emerged 
from  the  darkness,"  says  the  "Bhagavata  Pu- 
rana,"  which  according  to  the  Hindus  is  con- 
temporary with  the  "Veda,"  "the  subtle  ele- 
mentary principle  produced  the  vegetable  seed 
which  first  of  all  gave  life  to  the  plants.  From 
the  plants  life  passed  into  the  fantastic  crea- 
tures which  were  born  of  the  slime  in  the 
waters;  then,  through  a  series  of  different 
shapes  and  animals,  it  came  to  man."  "They 
passed  in  succession  by  way  of  the  plants,  the 

43 


The  Great  Secret 

worms,  the  insects,  the  serpents,  the  tortoises, 
cattle  and  the  wild  animals — such  is  the  lower 
stage,"  says  Manu  again,  who  adds:  "Creatures 
acquired  the  qualities  of  those  that  preceded 
them,  so  that  the  farther  down  its  position  in 
the  series,  the  greater  its  qualities."  1 

Have  we  not  here  the  whole  of  Darwinian 
evolution  confirmed  by  geology  and  foreseen  at 
least  six  thousand  years  ago?  On  the  other 
hand,  is  not  this  the  theory  of  the  Akahsa, 
which  we  more  clumsily  call  the  ether,  the  sole 
source  of  all  substances,  to  which  our  physical 
science  is  returning?  2  One  might  give  an  in- 
finite number  of  these  disquieting  examples. 
Whence  did  our  prehistoric  ancestors,  in  their 
supposedly  terrible  state  of  ignorance  and  aban- 
donment, derive  those  extraordinary  intui- 
tions, that  knowledge  and  assurance  which  we 
ourselves  are  scarcely  reconquering?  And  if 
their  ideas  were  correct  upon  certain  points 
which  we  are  able  by  chance  to  verify,  have 
we  not  reason  to  ask  ourselves  whether  they 

1<(Laws  of  Manu";  I,  20. 

2  It  is  true  that  the  recent  theories  of  Einstein  deny  the 
existence  of  the  ether,  supposing  that  radiant  energy — ivisible 
light,  for  example — is  propagated  independently  through  a 
space  that  is  an  absolute  void.  But  apart  from  the  fact 
that  these  theories  seem  still  to  be  doubtful,  it  should  be 
noted  that  the  scientific  ether,  to  which  our  modern  sci- 
entists have  been  obliged  to  resort,  is  not  precisely  the  Hindu 
Akahsa,  which  is  much  more  subtle  and  immaterial,  being 
a  sort  of  spiritual  element  or  divine  energy,  space  uncreated, 
imperishable,  and  infinite. 

44 


India 

may  not  have  seen  matters  more  correctly  and 
farther  ahead  than  we  did  in  respect  of  many 
other  problems,  as  to  which  they  are  equally 
definite  in  their  assertions  but  which  have  hith- 
erto been  beyond  our  verification?  One  thing 
is  certain,  that  to  reach  the  stage  at  which  they 
then  stood  they  must  have  had  behind  them 
a  treasury  of  traditions,  observations,  and  ex- 
periences— in  a  word,  of  wisdom — of  which  we 
find  it  difficult  to  form  any  conception;  but  in 
which,  while  waiting  for  something  better,  we 
ought  to  place  rather  more  confidence  than  we 
have  done,  and  by  which  we  might  well  benefit, 
assuaging  our  fears  and  learning  to  understand 
and  reassure  ourselves  in  respect  of  our  future 
beyond  the  tomb  and  guiding  our  lives. 

9 

We  have  just  seen  that  the  primitive  reli- 
gions, and  those  which  derive  therefrom,  are  in 
agreement  as  to  the  eternally  unknowable  na- 
ture of  the  First  Cause ;  and  that  their  explana- 
tions of  the  transition  from  non-being  to  being, 
from  the  passive  to  the  active,  and  of  the  gen- 
erative division  which  gives  rise  to  the  triad, 
are  almost  identical. 

Let  us  here  note  the  strange  defect  of  logic 
which  dominates  and  spreads  its  shadow  over 
the  whole  problem  of  religion.  The  mother- 
religions,  or  rather  the  mother-religion,  tells 
45 


The  Great  Secret 

us  that  the  Cause  of  Causes  is  unknowable; 
that  it  is  impossible  to  define,  comprehend,  or 
imagine  it;  that  it  is  It  and  nothing  more; 
that  it  is  non-existence  while  it  is  yet  preemi- 
nently and  essentially  Being,  eternal,  infinite,  oc- 
cupying all  time  and  space ;  indeed  it  is  all  time 
and  space,  having  neither  shape  nor  desire  nor 
any  particular  attribute,  since  it  has  all.  Now, 
from  this  unconditioned  Something,  this  abso- 
lute of  the  absolute,  of  which  we  cannot  say 
what  it  is,  and  even  less  what  it  purposes — of 
this,  the  very  source  of  the  undefinable,  and 
the  unknowable,  religion  calls  forth  emana- 
tions which  immediately  become  gods,  per- 
fectly comprehended,  perfectly  defined,  acting 
very  definitely  in  their  respective  spheres, 
manifesting  a  personal  power  and  will,  pro- 
mulgating laws  and  a  whole  moral  code  with 
which  man  is  enjoined  to  comply.  How 
can  entities  so  completely  comprehended 
emerge  from  an  entity  essentially  unknown? 
How,  if  the  whole  is  unknowable,  can  a 
part  of  this  whole  suddenly  become  famil- 
iar? In  this  illimitable  and  inconceivable 
Something,  the  only  thing  admissible,  for  it  is 
to  this  that  science  is  leading  us  back,  where  is 
the  point  whence  the  gods  who  have  been  im- 
posed upon  us  emerge?  Where  is  the  link? 
Where  the  affinity?  Where  and  at  what 
moment  was  the  incomprehensible  miracle  per- 

46 


India 

formed  of  the  transubstantiation  of  the  un- 
knowable? Where  is  the  transition-  which 
justifies  this  formidable  change  from  unfathom- 
able obscurity,  not  to  the  possible  or  the 
probable  merely,  but  to  the  known,  described 
even  to  its  smallest  details? 

Does  it  not  seem  as  though  the  mother-reli- 
gion— and  after  it  all  the  other  faiths,  which 
are  but  its  offspring,  more  or  less  disguised — 
must  have  wilfully  split  itself  in  two,  or  rather 
that  it  must  have  taken  a  stupendous  and  wil- 
fully blind  leap  into  the  gulf  of  unreason?  Is 
it  not  possible  that  it  has  not  dared  to  deduce 
all  the  consequences  of  its  tremendous  admis- 
sion? And  would  it  not,  for  that  matter,  have 
deduced  the  consequences  elsewhere,  and  pre- 
cisely in  the  secret  doctrines  whose  traces  we 
are  still  vainly  seeking,  and  whose  revelation 
sealed  forever  the  lips  of  the  great  initiates? 

10 

This  suspicion,  which  will  recur  more  than 
once  as  we  probe  more  deeply  into  these  reli- 
gions, would  explain  the  dread  cry  of  occultist 
tradition,  of  which  we  have  we  have  already 
spoken:  "Osiris  is  a  dark  god!"  Can  it  be 
that  the  great,  supreme  secret  is  absolute  ag- 
nosticism? Without  speaking  of  the  esoteric 
doctrines,  of  which  we  are  ignorant,  have  we 
not  an  all  but  public  avowal  in  the  word  Maya 

47 


The  Great  Secret 

— the  most  mysterious  of  Indian  words,  which 
means  that  all  things,  even  the  universe  and  the 
gods  who  create,  uphold,  and  rule  it,  are  but 
the  illusion  of  ignorance,  and  that  the  uncreated 
and  the  unknowable  alone  are  real? 

But  what  religion  could  proclaim  to  its  faith- 
ful: "We  know  nothing;  we  merely  declare 
that  this  universe  exists,  or,  at  least  appears 
to  our  eyes  to  exist.  Does  it  exist  of  itself, 
is  it  itself  a  god,  or  is  it  but  the  effect  of  a  re- 
mote cause?  And  behind  this  remote  cause 
must  we  not  suppose  yet  another  and  remoter 
cause,  and  so  forth  indefinitely,  to  the  verge 
of  madness:  for  if  God  is,  who  created  God? 

"Whether  He  is  cause  or  effect  matters  little 
enough  to  our  ignorance,  which  in  any  case  re- 
mains irreducible.  Its  blind  spots  have  merely 
been  shifted.  Traditions  of  great  antiquity 
tell  us  that  He  is  rather  the  manifestation  of 
a  Cause  even  more  inconceivable  than  Him- 
self. We  accept  this  tradition,  which  is,  per- 
haps, more  inexplicable  than  the  riddle  itself 
as  we  perceive  it,  but  which  seems  to  take  into 
account  its  apparently  transitory  or  perishable 
elements,  and  to  replace  them  by  an  eternal 
foundation,  immutable  and  purely  spiritual. 
Knowing  absolutely  nothing  of  this  Cause  we 
must  confine  ourselves  to  noting  certain  pro- 
pensities, certain  states  of  equilibrium,  certain 
laws,  which  seem  to  be  its  will.  Of  these,  for 


India 

the  time  being,  we  make  gods.  But  these  gods 
are  merely  personifications,  perhaps  accurate, 
perhaps  illusory,  perhaps  erroneous,  of  what 
we  believe  ourselves  to  have  observed.  It  is 
possible  that  other  more  accurate  observations 
will  dethrone  them.  It  is  possible  that  a  day 
will  come  when  we  shall  perceive  that  the  un- 
known Cause,  in  some  respect  a  little  less  un- 
known, has  had  other  intentions  than  those 
which  we  have  attributed  to  it.  We  shall  then 
change  the  names,  the  purposes,  and  the  laws 
of  our  gods.  But  in  the  meantime  those  whom 
we  offer  you  are  born  of  observations  and  ex- 
periences so  wise  and  so  ancient  that  hitherto 
none  have  been  able  to  excel  them." 

ii 

While  it  was  impossible  thus  to  address  its 
faithful,  who  would  not  have  understood  its 
confession,  it  could  safely  reveal  the  secret  to 
the  last  initiates,  who  had  been  prepared  by 
protracted  ordeals  and  whose  intelligence  was 
attested  by  a  selection  of  inhuman  severity.  To 
certain  of  these,  then,  it  admitted  everything. 
It  probably  told  them:  "In  offering  mankind 
our  gods  we  had  no  wish  to  deceive  them.  If 
we  had  confessed  to  them  that  God  is  unknown 
and  incomprehensible;  that  we  cannot  say  what 
He  is  or  what  He  purposes;  that  He  has  nei- 
ther shape  nor  substance  nor  dwelling-place,  nei- 

49 


The  Great  Secret 

ther  beginning  nor  end;  that  He  is  everywhere 
and  nowhere;  that  He  is  nothing  becauses  He 
is  everything:  they  would  have  concluded  that 
He  does  not  exist  at  all,  that  neither  laws  nor 
duties  have  any  existence,  and  that  the  uni- 
verse is  a  vast  abyss  in  which  all  should  make 
haste  to  do  as  they  please.  Now  even  if  we 
know  nothing  we  know  that  this  is  not  so  and 
cannot  be  so.  We  know,  in  any  case,  that  the 
Cause  of  Causes  is  not  material,  as  men  would 
understand  it,  for  all  matter  appears  to  be  per- 
ishable, and  perishable  it  cannot  be.  For  us 
this  unknown  Cause  is  actually  our  God,  be- 
cause our  understanding  is  capable  of  perceiv- 
ing it  as  having  a  scope  which  is  limited  only 
by  our  finite  imagination.  We  know,  with  a 
certainty  that  nothing  has  power  to  shake,  that 
this  Cause,  or  the  Cause  of  this  Cause,  and  so 
forth  indefinitely,  must  exist,  although  we  are 
aware  that  we  can  never  know  it  or  understand 
it.  But  very  few  men  are  capable  of  convinc-^ 
ing  themselves  of  the  existence  of  a  thing  which 
they  can  never  hope  to  touch,  feel,  hear,  know, 
or  understand.  This  is  why,  instead  of  the 
nothingness  which  they  would  think  that  we 
were  offering  them  were  we  to  tell  them  how 
ignorant  we  are  of  all  things,  we  offer  them  as 
their  guide  certain  apparent  traces  of  purpose 
which  we  believe  ourselves  to  have  detected  in 
the  darkness  of  time  and  space." 

50 


India 

« 

12 

This  confession  of  absolute  ignorance  in  re- 
spect of  the  First  Cause  and  the  essential  nature 
of  the  God  of  Gods  will  be  found  likewise  at 
the  root  of  the  Egyptian  religion.  But  it  is 
very  probable  that  once  it  was  lost  to  sight — 
for  humanity  does  not  care  to  linger  in  hope- 
lessness and  ignorance — it  would  have  been 
necessary  to  repeat  it  to  the  initiates,  to  state 
it  definitely,  to  emphasize  it  and  to  deduce 
its  consequences;  and,  thus  revealed  in  its  en- 
tirety, it  may  have  become  the  foundation  of 
the  secret  doctrine.  We  find,  in  fact,  that  the 
makers  of  the  subsequent  theogonies  were  eager 
to  forget  the  confession  recorded  on  the  first 
pages  of  the  sacred  books.  They  no  longer 
took  it  into  account;  they  thrust  it  back  into 
the  darkness  of  the  beginning,  the  night  of  the 
incomprehensible.  No  longer  was  it  discussed, 
for  men  concerned  themselves  now  only  with 
the  gods  who  had  issued  from  it,  forgetting 
always  to  add  that  having  emanated  from  the 
inexpressible  unknown  they  must  necessarily, 
essentially  and  by  definition,  participate  in  its 
nature,  and  must  be  equally  unknown  and  un- 
knowable. It  may  therefore  be  the  case  that 
the  secret  doctrine  reserved  to  the  high  priests 
led  them  to  a  more  accurate  conception  of  the 
primordial  truth. 


The  Great  Secret 

There  was  in  all  probability  no  need  to  add 
further  explanations  to  this  confession  since  it 
destroys  the  very  grounds  of  all  possible  ex- 
planations. What,  for  example,  could  the  ini- 
tiates be  told  on  the  subject  of  the  first  and 
most  formidable  of  all  enigmas,  which  is  en- 
countered immediately  following  that  of  the 
Cause  of  Causes — the  origin  of  evil?  The  ex- 
oteric religions  solved  the  riddle  by  dividing 
and  multiplying  their  gods.  This  was  a  simple 
and  easy  procedure.  There  were  gods  of  light 
who  represented,  and  did,  good;  and  there  were 
gods  of  darkness  who  represented,  and  did, 
evil;  they  fought  one  another  in  all  the  worlds, 
and  although  the  good  gods  were  always  the 
more  powerful  they  were  never  completely 
victorious  in  this  world.  We  shall  find  the 
most  definite  types  of  this  dualism  in  the  my- 
thology of  the  "Avesta,"  in  which  they  take 
the  names  of  Ormuz  and  Ahriman;  but  by 
other  names,  and  in  other  shapes,  and  indefi- 
nitely multiplied,  we  shall  find  them  in  all  reli- 
gions— even  in  Christianity,  in  which  Ahriman 
becomes  the  prince  of  devils. 

But  what  could  the  initiates  have  been  told? 
The  modern  theosophists  who  profess  to  un- 
veil at  least  a  portion  of  the  secret  doctrines, 
by  subdividing  in  a  similar  fashion  the  mani- 
festations of  the  unknown  origin,  do  no  more 
than  reproduce  in  another  shape  the  too  facile 

52 


India 

explanations  of  exoteric  religion,  so  that  they 
remain  as  far  removed  from  the  source  of  the 
enigma  as  the  exoteric  doctrine  itself;  and  in 
the  whole  domain  of  occultism  we  do  not  find 
even  a  shadow  of  the  beginning  of  an  explana- 
tion which  differs  otherwise  than  in  its  terms 
from  those  of  the  official  religions.  We  do  not 
know,  then,  what  was  revealed  to  them;  and  it 
is  likely  enough  that,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the 
mysterious  First  Cause,  they  had  to  be  told 
that  no  one  knew  anything.  In  all  probability 
it  was  impossible  to  tell  them  anything  that 
the  optimistic  philosophies  of  to-day  could  not 
tell  us;  namely,  that  evil  does  not  exist  of  it- 
self, but  only  from  our  point  of  view;  that  it  is 
purely  relative,  that  moral  evil  is  but  a  blind- 
ness or  a  caprice  of  our  judgment,  while  phys- 
ical evil  is  due  to  a  defective  organization  or 
an  error  of  sensibility;  that  the  most  terrible 
pain  is  only  pleasure  incorrectly  interpreted  by 
our  nerves,  just  as  the  keenest  pleasure  is  al- 
ready pain.  This  may  be  true;  but  we 
wretched  human  beings,  and  above  all  the 
lower  animals  whose  only  life  is  this  one,  have 
a  right  to  demand  a  few  supplementary  expla- 
nations, if,  as  is  only  too  often  the  case,  this 
life  is  merely  a  tissue  of  intolerable  suffering. 
The  initiated  must  have  been  given  such  ex- 
planations. They  were  referred  to  reincarna- 
tion, to  theories  of  expiation  and  purification. 

53 


The  Great  Secret 

But  these  hints,  valuable  enough  if  we  admit 
the  hypothesis  of  intelligent  gods  whose  inten- 
tions are  known,  are  less  defensible  when  we  are 
dealing  with  an  unknowable  Cause,  to  which 
we  cannot  attribute  intelligence  or  will  without 
denying  that  they  are  unknown.  If  the  adepts 
were  ever  given  any  other  explanation,  of  a 
nature  to  impose  itself  upon  them,  this  explana- 
tion should  have  contained  the  sovereign  key 
of  the  enigma;  it  should  have  revealed  all  the 
mysteries.  But  not  even  the  shadow  of  this 
chimerical  key  has  come  down  to  us. 

13 

Uncertain  though  its  foundations  may  be, 
since  they  rest  only  on  the  unknowable,  the  fact 
remains  that  this  primitive  religion  has  handed 
down  to  us  an  incomparable  body  of  doctrine 
touching  the  constitution  and  evolution  of  the 
universe,  the  duration  of  the  transformations 
of  the  stars  and  the  earth,  time,  space,  and 
eternity,  the  relations  between  matter  and 
mind,  the  invisible  forces  of  nature,  the  prob- 
able destiny  of  mankind,  and  morality.  The 
esoterism  of  all  the  religions,  from  that  of 
Egypt  perhaps,  and  in  any  case  from  those  of 
Persia  and  Chaldea,  and  the  Greek  mysteries, 
down  to  the  Hermetics  of  the  middle  ages, 
benefited  by  this  doctrine,  deriving  from  it  the 
most  important  and  most  reliable  elements  of 

54 


India 

its  prestige,  by  attributing  them  to  a  secret  rev- 
elation, until  the  discovery  of  the  sacred  books 
of  India  made  known  their  actual  source  and 
propounded  a  fresh  enigma.  Fundamentally 
esoterism  was  never  anything  more  than  a  more 
learned  cosmogony,  a  more  rational,  more  ma- 
jestic, and  purer  theogony,  a  loftier  morality 
than  that  of  the  vulgar  religions;  moreover  it 
possessed,  for  the  preservation  or  defense  of 
its  doctrines,  the  secret,  painfully  transmitted 
and  often  terribly  obscured,  of  the  manipula- 
tion of  certain  forgotten  forces.  To-day  we 
are  able,  beneath  all  its  deformations,  all  its 
disguises,  and  all  its  masks,  which  are  some- 
times dreadfully  distorted,  to  recognize  the 
same  countenance.  From  this  point  of  view 
it  is  certain  that  since  the  publication  and  trans- 
lation of  the  authentic  texts,  occultism,  as  it 
was  still  understood  scarcely  more  than  fifty 
years  ago,  has  lost  three  fourths  of  its  richest 
territories.  Notably  it  has  lost  almost  all 
doctrinal  interest  except  as  a  means  of  verifica- 
tion, since  we  are  now  able  to  learn,  at  the 
very  source  from  which  it  used  to  flow  so 
grudgingly,  all  that  it  used  secretly  to  teach: 
on  the  subject  of  God  or  the  gods;  the  origin 
of  the  world;  the  immaterial  forces  which 
govern  it;  heaven  and  hell,  as  understood  by 
the  Jews,  Greeks,  and  Christians;  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  body  and  the  soul,  the  destiny  of 

55 


The  Great  Secret 

the  latter,  its  responsibilities,  and  its  life  be- 
yond the  tomb. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  these  ancient  and  au- 
thentic texts  having  at  last  been  translated, 
prove  that  nearly  all  the  affirmations  of  oc- 
cultism, from  the  doctrinal  point  of  view,  were 
not  purely  imaginary  but  were  based  on  real 
and  immemorial  traditions,  they  permit  us  like- 
wise to  suppose  that  all  its  assertions  in  other 
respects,  and  especially  with  regard  to  the 
utilization  of  certain  unknown  energies,  may 
be  not  purely  chimerical;  and  in  this  way  it 
gains  on  the  one  hand  what  it  loses  on  the  other. 
In  fact,  while  we  possess  the  more  important 
of  the  sacred  books  of  India,  it  is  almost  cer- 
tain that  there  are  others  with  which  we  are 
not  yet  acquainted,  just  as  it  is  highly  probable 
that  we  have  still  to  fathom  the  hidden  mean- 
ing of  many  of  the  hieroglyphs.  It  may  there- 
fore be  a  fact  that  the  occultists  became  ac- 
quainted with  these  writings  or  these  oral  tradi- 
tions by  infiltrations  such  as  those  which  we 
have  remarked.  It  would  seem  that  the  traces 
of  such  infiltrations  are  perceptible  in  their 
biology,  their  medicine,  their  chemistry,  their 
physics,  their  astronomy,  and  especially  in  all 
that  touches  on  the  existence  of  the  more  or 
less  immaterial  entities  who  appear  to  live 
with  and  around  us.  In  this  connection  oc- 
cultism still  retains  an  interest  and  deserves  an 

56 


India 

attentive  and  methodical  study  which  might  ef- 
fectively support  and  perhaps  participate  in 
the  investigations  which  the  independent  and 
methodical  metapsychists  have  on  their  part 
undertaken  in  respect  of  the  same  subject. 

14 

As  for  the  primitive  tradition,  while  it  has 
lost  the  prestige  attaching  to  occultism,  and 
while  on  the  other  hand  its  foundations  are  in- 
admissible in  that  it  derives  all  its  precepts  and 
all  its  affirmations  from  a  source  which  it  has 
itself  declared  to  be  forever  inaccessible,  in- 
comprehensible, and  unknowable,  it  is  none  the 
less  true,  if  we  ignore  this  defective  founda- 
tion, that  these  affirmations  and  precepts  are 
the  most  unlooked-for,  the  loftiest,  the  most 
admirable  and  the  most  plausible  that  man- 
kind has  hitherto  known. 

Have  we  the  right,  for  example,  to  reject  a 
priori,  as  a  puerile  fancy,  wholly  unsupported, 
the  conception  of  the  Fall  of  Man,  which  we 
cannot  verify,  when  close  beside  it,  almost  con- 
temporary with  it,  we  find  another  disaster, 
equally  general;  that  of  the  world-wide,  pre- 
historic deluges  and  cataclysms  which  the 
geologists  have  actually  verified?  With  what 
profound  truth  may  not  this  legend  of  a  super- 
humanity,  happier  and  more  intelligent  than 
ours,  correspond?  So  far  we  know  nothing  of 

57 


The  Great  Secret 

it;  but  neither  did  we  know  what  corresponded 
with  the  tradition  of  the  great  catastrophes  be- 
fore the  annals  of  these  upheavals,  inscribed  in 
the  bowels  of  the  earth,  revealed  to  us  what 
had  occurred.  I  might  mention  a  large  num- 
ber of  traditions  of  this  sort,  the  intuitions  of 
genius  or  immemorial  truths,  to  which  science  is 
to-day  returning,  or  is  at  least  discovering  their 
vestiges.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  suc- 
cessive appearance  of  the  various  forms  of  life 
precisely  in  the  order  assigned  to  them  by  the 
paleontologists.  To  these  we  must  add  the 
preponderant  part  played  by  the  ether,  that 
cosmic,  imponderable  fluid,  the  bridge  between 
mind  and  matter,  the  source  of  all  that  which 
the  primitive  religion  called  Akahsa,  and  which 
by  constant  repetition,  becomes  the  Telesma  of 
Hermes  Trismegistus,  the  living  fire  of  Zo- 
roaster, the  generative  fire  of  Herodotus,  the 
ignis  subtillissimus  of  Hippocrates,  the  astral 
light  of  the  cabala,  the  pneuma  of  Gallien,  the 
quintessence  or  azote  of  the  alchemists,  the 
spirit  of  life  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  sub- 
tle matter  of  Descartes,  the  spiritus  subtillis- 
simus  of  Newton,  the  Od  of  Reichenbach  and 
Carl  du  Prel,  "the  infinite  ether,  mysterious  and 
always  in  movement,  whence  all  things  come 
and  whither  all  return,"  to  which  our  scientists, 
in  their  laboratories,  are  at  last  obliged  to  have 

58 


India 

recourse  in  order  to  account  for  a  host  of 
phenomena  which  without  it  would  be  utterly 
inexplicable.  All  that  our  chemists  and  phys- 
icists call  heat,  light,  electricity,  and  magnet- 
ism was  for  our  ancestors  merely  the  element- 
ary manifestations  of  a  single  substance. 
Thousand  of  years  ago  they  recognized  the 
presence  and  the  all-powerful  intervention  of 
this  ubiquitous  agent  in  all  the  phenomena  of 
life;  just  as  they  described,  long  before  our 
astronomers,  the  birth  and  formation  of  the 
stars ;  just  as  the  pretended  myth  of  the  trans- 
mutation of  the  metals,  which  they  bequeathed 
to  the  alchemists  of  the  middle  ages,  is  likewise 
confirmed  by  the  chemical  and  thermal  evolu- 
tion of  the  stars,  "which,"  as  Charles  Nord- 
mann  remarks,  "offer  us  a  perfect  example  of 
this  transmutation,  since  the  heavier  metals  ap- 
pear only  after  the  lighter  elements  and  when 
they  have  cooled  sufficiently" ;  and  lastly,  since 
we  must  draw  the  line  somewhere,  just  as  they 
taught,  in  opposition  to  the  scientists  of  a 
fairly  recent  period,  that  the  duration  of  the 
universe,  the  ages  of  the  earth,  and  the  time 
which  will  elapse  between  its  birth  and  its  de- 
struction, must  be  increased  to  millions  of  cen- 
turies, since  a  day  of  Brahma,  which  corre- 
sponds with  the  evolution  of  our  world,  con- 
tains 4320  millions  of  years. 
59 


The  Great  Secret 

15 

Our  forebears  had  also  an  unexpected  tradi- 
tion concerning  yet  another  problem,  more  awe- 
inspiring  and  more  essential,  since  it  involves 
the  fundamental  law  of  our  universe.  Of  this 
tradition  humanity  will  never  be  able  to  verify 
more  than  an  infinitesimal  portion.  They  tell 
us  that  the  cosmos,  the  visible  manifestation 
of  the  unknown  and  invisible  Cause,  has  never 
been  and  will  never  be  other  than  an  uninter- 
rupted sequence  of  expansions  and  contractions, 
of  evaporations  and  condensations,  of  sleeping 
and  waking,  of  inspirations  and  expirations,  of 
attractions  and  repulsions,  of  evolution  and  in- 
volution, of  materialization  and  spiritualiza- 
tion,  "of  interiorization  and  exteriorization" 
as  Dr.  Jaworski  observes,  who  has  discovered 
an  analogous  principle  in  biology. 

The  unknown  Cause  awakens,  and  for  thou- 
sands of  millions  of  years  suns  and  planets  radi- 
ate energy,  dispersing  and  scattering  them- 
selves, spreading  throughout  space;  it  sleeps 
again,  and  for  thousands  of  millions  of  years 
the  same  worlds,  hastening  from  every  point  of 
the  horizon,  attracting  one  another,  concentrat- 
ing, contracting,  and  solidifying  until  they  form 
— without  perishing,  for  nothing  can  perish — 
only  one  sole  mass,  which  returns  to  the  invisi- 
ble Cause.  It  is  precisely  in  one  of  these  peri- 

60 


India 

ods  of  contraction  or  inhalation  that  we  are 
living.  It  is  ruled  by  that  vast,  mysterious  law 
of  gravitation,  of  which  no  one  can  say  whether 
it  is  electricity  or  magnetism  or  a  spiritual 
force,  although  it  is  predominant  over  all  the 
other  laws  of  nature.  If  all  bodies — so  New- 
ton tells  us — had  from  all  eternity,  without  be- 
ginning, mutually  attracted  one  another  in 
direct  proportion  to  their  mass,  and  inversely 
as  the  squares  of  their  distances,  all  the  sub- 
stance of  the  universe  ought  by  now  to  form 
nothing  but  an  infinite  mass,  unless  we  presup- 
pose an  absolute  and  immovable  equilibrium 
which  would  amount  to  eternal  immobility.  In 
the  perpetual  motion  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
in  which  the  displacement  of  an  atom  would 
disturb  it,  it  does  not  seem  possible  that  this 
equilibrium  could  exist.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  is  almost  certain  that  it  does  not  exist,  and 
the  Apex,  that  mysterious  spot  in  the  celestial 
sphere,  not  far  from  Vega,  toward  which  our 
solar  system  is  hurling  itself  with  all  its  retinue 
of  planets,  may  possibly  be,  as  far  as  we  are 
concerned,  its  point  of  rupture  and  one  of  the 
first  phases  of  the  great  contraction,  which,  ac- 
cording to  the  latest  calculations  of  the  astron- 
omers, will  take  place  in  400,000  years'  time. 
But  if  it  is  fact  that  this  terrible  contraction 
must  almost  inevitably  occur,  the  universe  will 
one  day  be  no  more  than  a  monstrous  mass  of 
61 


The  Great  Secret 

matter,  compact,  infinite,  and  probably  forever 
lifeless,  outside  which  nothing  could  possibly 
find  place.  Would  this  illimitable  mass,  con- 
sisting of  the  total  sum  of  all  cosmic  matter,  in- 
cluding the  etheric  and  all  but  spiritual  fluid 
that  fills  the  fabulous  interstellar  spaces,  occupy 
the  whole  of  space,  finally  and  eternally  con- 
gealed in  death,  or  would  it  float  in  a  void  more 
subtle  than  that  of  etheric  space,  and  hence- 
forth subject  to  other  forces?  It  seems  as 
though  the  fundamental  law  of  the  universe 
must  result  in  a  sort  of  annihilation,  a  blind 
alley,  an  absurdity;  while  on  the  other  hand,  if 
we  deny  this  universal  attraction  or  gravitation, 
we  are  denying  the  only  phenomenon  which  we 
can  establish  as  indisputable,  and  all  the 
heavenly  bodies  will  be  absolutely  uncontrolled 
by  law. 

16 

The  imagination,  the  intuition,  the  observa- 
tions, or  the  traditions  of  our  forefathers 
passed  this  dead  point.  Behind  their  mythical 
or  mystical  phraseology  they  pondered  the  uni- 
verse, regarding  it  as  an  electrical  phenomenon, 
or  rather  as  a  vast  source  of  subtle  and  incom- 
prehensible energy,  obeying  the  same  laws  as 
those  which  control  magnetic  energy,  in  which 
all  is  action  and  reaction;  in  which  two  antag- 
onistic forces  are  always  face  to  face.  When 
the  poles  of  the  magnet  are  reversed  attraction 
62 


India 

is  followed  by  repulsion,  and  centripetal  by  cen- 
trifugal force;  while  gravitation  is  opposed  by 
another  law  which  as  yet  is  nameless,  but  which 
redistributes  matter  and  the  worlds,  in  order 
to  recommence  a  new  day  of  Brahma.  This 
is  the  solve  et  coagula  of  the  alchemists. 

This,  obviously,  is  merely  a  hypothesis,  some 
aspects  of  which  cannot  be  maintained  save  by 
certain  electrical  and  magnetic  phenomena,  and 
the  properties  of  radioactive  bodies,  and  which 
as  a  whole  cannot  of  course  be  verified.  But 
it  is  interesting  to  note  once  again  that  this 
hypothesis,  the  most  majestic,  the  boldest,  and 
also  the  most  ancient,  being  indeed  the  first  of 
all,  is  perhaps  the  only  one  to  which  science 
might  rally  without  derogation.  Here  again 
have  we  not  the  right  to  ask  ourselves  whether 
our  forefathers  were  not  more  far-sighted, 
more  perspicacious  than  we,  and  whether  we 
ourselves  are  capable  of  imagining  so  vast  and 
so  probable  a  cosmogony  as  theirs? 


If  now  from  these  heights  we  return  to  man- 
kind we  shall  discover  intuitions  or  convic- 
tions of  no  less  remarkable  a  nature.  With- 
out venturing  ourselves  amid  the  complexity 
of  subdivisions  which,  after  all,  are  of  later 
date  and  would  lead  us  too  far  afield,  we  shall 
confine  ourselves  to  saying  that  in  all  the  primi- 

63 


The  Great  Secret 

tive  doctrines,  which  agree  in  a  most  remark- 
able fashion,  man  is  composed  of  three  essen- 
tial parts:  a  perishable  physical  body;  a  spiri- 
tual principle,  a  shadow  or  astral  double,  like- 
wise perishable,  but  much  more  durable  than  the 
body,  and  an  immortal  principle  which,  after 
more  or  less  protracted  developments,  returns 
to  its  origin,  which  is  God. 

Now  we  can  prove  that  in  the  phenomena  of 
hypnotism,  magnetism,  mediumship,  and  som- 
nambulism, in  all  that  concerns  certain  extraor- 
dinary faculties  of  the  subconsciousness,  which 
seem  independent  of  the  physical  body,  and 
also  in  certain  manifestations  from  beyond  the 
grave,  which  to-day  can  hardly  be  denied,  our 
metaphsychical  sciences  are  in  a  sense  obliged 
to  admit  the  existence  of  this  astral  double, 
which  everywhere  extends  beyond  the  physical 
entity  and  is  able  to  leave  it,  to  act  independ- 
ently of  it  and  at  a  distance,  and  in  all  proba- 
bility to  survive  it,  which  seems  once  again,  and 
in  an  extremely  important  connection,  to  jus- 
tify the  almost  prehistoric  intuitions  of  our 
Hindu  and  Egyptian  ancestors. 


As  I  have  only  too  often  repeated,  we  might 

multiply  such  instances;  and  when  our  science 

has  thus  confirmed  one  of  these  intuitions  or 

traditions  it  would  be  only  sensible  to  regard 

64 


India 

such  as  are  still  awaiting  this  confirmation  with 
a  little  more  confidence.  The  greater  the  num- 
ber of  instances  in  which  it  has  been  proved  that 
they  were  not  mistaken,  the  greater  the  chances 
that  they  are  in  the  right  in  respect  of  other 
instances  which  cannot  yet  be  verified.  Very 
often  these  latter  are  the  most  important,  be- 
ing those  which  affect  us  most  directly  and 
profoundly.  We  must  not  as  yet  draw  too 
general  or  too  hasty  conclusions ;  rather  let  us, 
as  a  result  of  these  first  confirmations,  or  be- 
ginnings of  confirmations,  accord  a  provisional 
and  vigilant  credit  to  the  other  hypotheses. 
When  we  have  finally  verified  these  first  in- 
stances we  shall  not  be  out  of  the  wood;  but 
we  shall  be  a  great  deal  nearer  the  open  sky 
than  we  were,  which  is  as  much  as  we  have 
the  right  to  hope  or  demand  from  any  religious 
or  philosophical  system,  or  even  from  any  sci- 
ence; to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  the  least 
advance  here,  at  the  center  of  all  things,  is 
of  incomparably  greater  importance  than  an  ad- 
vance along  a  diameter  or  on  the  circumference ; 
since  from  this  hub  or  center  spring  all  the 
spokes  of  that  vast  wheel  of  which  science  has 
barely  examined  the  outer  rim. 

It  must  be  admitted  once  for  all  that  we  can- 
not understand  or  explain  anything;  otherwise 
we  should  be  no  longer  men  but  gods :  or  rather 
the  one  God.     Apart  from  a  few  mathematical 
65 


The  Great  Secret 

and  material  proofs  whose  essential  drift  we 
cannot  after  all  perceive,  all  is  hypothetical. 
We  have  nothing  but  hypotheses  on  which  to 
order  our  lives,  if  we  cease  to  count  upon  cer- 
tainties which  will  probably  never  emerge.  It 
is  therefore  of  great  importance  that  we  should 
select  our  vital  hypotheses  carefully,  accepting 
only  the  noblest,  the  best,  and  the  most  credi- 
ble; and  we  shall  find  that  thes«"  are  almost  in- 
variably the  most  ancient.  In  the  hierarchy  of 
evolution  we  shall  never  know  that  central  or 
supreme  Being,  nor  His  latest  thought;  but 
for  all  that  we  must  do  our  best  to  learn  a  great 
deal  more  than  we  do  know.  That  we  can- 
not know  everything  is  no  reason  for  resigning 
ourselves  to  knowing  nothing;  and  if  branches 
of  knowledge  other  than  science,  properly  or 
improperly  so  called,  are  able  to  help  us,  to 
lead  us  farther  or  more  rapidly,  we  shall  do 
well  to  interrogate  them,  or  at  least  not  to 
reject  them  beforehand  without  due  investi- 
gation, as  has  hitherto  been  done  only  too  read- 
ily and  only  too  often. 

19 

Among  these  assertions  and  these  doctrines 
that  cannot  be  verified  we  shall  consider  only 
those  that  concern  us  most  intimately,  and  nota- 
bly those  which  touch  upon  the  conduct  of  our 
lives;  on  the  sanctions,  the  responsibilities,  the 

66 


India 

compensations,  and  the  moral  philosophy  that 
proceed  therefrom;  on  the  mysteries  of  death, 
the  life  beyond  the  tomb,  and  the  final  destinies 
of  mankind. 

Hitherto  almost  all  the  doctrines  which  touch 
upon  these  points  have  been,  for  us  Europeans, 
esoteric,  hidden  away  in  the  scrolls  of  the  cabala 
or  the  gnosis,  the  persecuted,  humble,  and  hag- 
gard heirs  of  the  Hindu,  Egyptian,  Persian, 
and  Chaldean  wisdom.  But  since  the  Sanskrit 
texts  have  been  deciphered  they  are  so  no 
longer,  at  least  in  their  essential  elements;  for 
although,  as  I  have  already  stated,  we  are  far 
from  being  acquainted  with  all  the  sacred  books 
of  India,  and  are  perhaps  even  farther  from 
having  grasped  the  secret  meaning  of  the  hiero- 
glyphs, nevertheless  it  is  by  no  means  likely  that 
any  fresh  revelation  or  complete  explanation 
would  be  of  a  nature  seriously  to  unsettle  what 
we  already  know. 

20 

No  rule  of  conduct,  no  moral  philosophy 
could  be  derived  from  the  unknowable  First 
Cause,  the  one  unmanifested  God.  It  is  in- 
deed impossible  to  know  what  He  desires  or 
intends,  since  it  is  impossible  to  know  Him.  To 
discover  a  purpose  in  the  Infinite,  in  .the  uni- 
verse, or  in  the  Deity,  we  are  compelled  to 
cast  ourselves  adrift  on  the  unprovable,  and  to 

67 


The  Great  Secret 

cross  great  gulfs  of  illogic  of  which  we  have 
already  spoken,  evoking  from  this  Cause,  which 
to  manifest  itself  has  divided  itself,  one  god  or 
many,  emanations  from  the  Unknowable,  who 
suddenly  become  as  familiar  as  though  they  had 
issued  from  the  hands  of  man.  It  is  obvious 
that  the  ethical  basis  resulting  from  this  ar- 
bitrary procedure  will  always  be  precarious, 
offering  itself  merely  as  a  postulate  which  must 
be  accepted  with  closed  eyes.  But  it  is  worthy 
of  note  that,  following  upon  this  preliminary 
operation,  or  concurrently  with  it,  in  all  the 
primitive  religions,  we  shall  find  another  which 
is,  as  it  were,  its  necessary  and,  in  any  case,  its 
invariable  consequence :  the  voluntary  sacrifice 
of  one  of  these  emanations  of  the  Unknowable, 
Who  becomes  incarnate,  renouncing  His  pre- 
rogatives, in  order  to  deify  humanity  by  hu- 
manizing God. 

Egypt,  India,  Chaldea,  China,  Mexico,  Peru 
— all  know  the  myth  of  the  child-god  born  of 
a  virgin;  and  the  first  Jesuit  missionary  to 
China  discovered  that  the  miraculous  birth  of 
Christ  had  been  anticipated  by  Fuh-Ke,  who 
was  born  3468  years  before  Jesus.  It  has 
very  truly  been  said  that  if  a  priest  of  ancient 
Thebes  or  Heliopolis  were  to  return  to  earth 
he  would  recognize,  in  Raphael's  painting  of 
the  Virgin  and  Child,  the  picture  of  Horus 
in  the  arms  of  Isis.  The  Egyptian  Isis,  like 

68 


India 

our  own  Immaculate  Virgin,  was  represented 
standing  on  a  crescent  moon  and  crowned  with 
stars.  Devaki  also  is  depicted  for  us  bearing 
in  her  arms  the  divine  Krishna,  while  Istar, 
in  Babylon,  holds  the  infant  Tammuz  on  her 
knees.  The  myth  of  the  Incarnation,  which  is 
also  a  solar  myth,  is  thus  repeated  from  age 
to  age,  under  different  names,  but  it  is  in  India, 
where  it  almost  certainly  originated,  that  we 
find  it  in  its  purest,  loftiest,  and  most  signi- 
ficant form. 

21 

Without  lingering  over  the  doubtful  incar- 
nations of  the  Hermes,  the  Manus,  and  the  Zo- 
roasters,  which  cannot  be  historically  verified,  let 
us  consider,  among  the  many  incarnations  of 
Vishnu,  the  second  person  of  the  Brahman  Trin- 
ity, only  the  two  most  famous:  the  eighth, 
which  is  that  of  Krishna,  and  the  ninth,  which  is 
that  of  Buddha.  The  approximate  date  of  the 
earlier  incarnation  is  given  us  by  the  "Bhaga- 
vat-Gita,"  which  gives  prominence  to  the 
wonderful  figure  of  Krishna.  The  Catholic 
Indianists,  fearing  with  all  their  too  narrow 
point  of  view,  that  the  incarnation  of  Krishna 
might  endanger  that  of  Christ,  admit  that  the 
"Bhagavat-Gita"  was  written  before  our  era, 
but  maintain  that  it  has  since  been  revised.  As 
it  is  difficult  to  prove  such  revisions,  they  add 

69 


The  Great  Secret 

that  if  it  is  actually  proved  that  the  "Bhagavat- 
Gita"  and  other  sacred  books  of  an  equally  em- 
barrassing character  are  really  anterior  to 
Christ,  they  are  the  work  of  the  devil,  who, 
foreseeing  the  incarnation  of  Jesus,  purposed 
by  these  anticipations  to  lessen  its  effect.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  the  purely  scientific  Indian- 
ists — William  Jones,  Colebrooke,  Thomas 
Strange,  Wilson,  Princeps,  et  al  agree  in  the 
opinion  that  it  dates  from  at  least  twelve  or 
fourteen  centuries  before  our  era.  It  is  in 
fact  commented  upon  and  analyzed  in  the  Mo- 
dana-Ratna-Pradipa,  (a  selection  from  the 
texts  of  the  most  ancient  lawmakers),  in  "Vri- 
haspati,"  in  "Parasara,"  in  "Narada,"  and  in 
a  host  of  other  works  of  indisputable  authen- 
ticity. According  to  other  Orientalists,  since 
the  truth  must  be  told,  the  poems  upon  Krishna 
are  no  older  than  the  "Mahabharata,"  which 
after  all  takes  us  back  two  centuries  before 
Jesus  Christ. 

As  for  the  incarnation  of  Siddartha  Gautama 
Buddha,  or  Sakya-Muni,  no  doubt  is  any  longer 
possible.  Sakya-Muni  was  a  historical  person- 
nage  who  lived  in  the  fifth  century  before 
Christ. 

22 

All  this,  moreover,  is  well  enough  known;  it 
is  needless  to  labor  the  point.  But  what  can 
be  the  secret  meaning  of  a  myth  so  immemorial, 

70 


India 

so  unanimous,  so  disconcerting?  The  unknown 
Cause  of  all  causes,  subdividing  itself,  de- 
scending from  the  heights  of  the  inconceivable, 
sacrificing  itself,  circumscribing  itself,  and  be- 
coming man  that  it  might  make  itself  known 
to  men  !  Would  not  all  the  possible  interpreta- 
tions be  unreasonable  did  we  refuse  to  see, 
beneath  this  incomprehensible  myth,  yet  an- 
other confession,  this  time  more  indirect,  better 
disguised,  more  profoundly  concealed,  of  the 
fundamental  agnosticism,  the  sublime  and  in- 
vincible ignorance  of  the  great  primitive  teach- 
ers? They  knew  that  the  unknowable  could 
give  birth  to  nothing  but  the  unknown.  They 
knew  that  man  could  never  know  God;  and 
this  is  why,  no  longer  searching  in  a  direction 
in  which  all  hope  was  impossible,  they  directly 
approached  humanity,  as  the  only  thing  with 
which  they  were  acquainted.  They  said  to 
themselves:  "It  is  impossible  for  us  to  know 
what  God  is,  or  where  He  is,  or  what  He  pur- 
poses; but  we  do  know  that,  being  everywhere 
and  everything,  He  is  necessarily  in  man,  and 
that  He  is  man:  it  is  therefore  only  in  man  and 
through  man  that  we  can  discover  His  pur- 
pose." Under  the  symbol  of  the  Incarnation 
they  thus  conceal  the  great  truth  that  all  the 
divine  laws  are  human;  and  this  truth  is  only 
the  reverse  of  another  truth,  of  no  less  magni- 
tude; namely,  that  in  mankind  is  the  only  god 

7i 


The  Great  Secret 

that  we  can  ever  know.  God  manifests  Him- 
self in  nature,  but  He  has  never  spoken  to 
us  save  by  the  voice  of  mankind.  Do  not  look 
elsewhere;  do  not  seek  in  the  inaccessible  infin- 
ity of  space  the  God  whom  you  are  eager  to 
find;  it  is  in  you  yourself  that  He  is  hidden 
and  it  is  in  you  yourself  that  you  must  find 
Him.  He  is  there,  within  you,  no  less  than  in 
those  in  whom  He  appears  to  be  incarnated 
in  a  more  dazzling  fashion.  Every  man  is 
Krishna,  every  man  is  Buddha;  there  is  no 
difference  between  the  God  incarnate  in  them 
and  Him  who  is  incarnate  in  you;  but  they 
found  Him  more  easily  than  you  have  done. 
Imitate  them  and  you  will  be  their  peer;  and 
if  you  cannot  keep  up  with  them  you  can  at 
least  give  ear  to  what  they  tell  you,  for  they 
can  but  tell  you  what  the  God  who  is  within 
you  would  tell  you,  if  you  had  learned  to 
listen  to  Him  as  they  have  listened. 

23 

There  we  have  the  foundation  of  the  whole 
of  the  Vedic  religion,  and  of  all  the  esoteric 
religions  which  have  sprung  from  it.  But  at 
its  source  the  truth  will  hardly  be  enwrapped 
in  symbols  or  transparent  myths.  There  is 
nothing  secret  about  it;  often,  indeed,  it  de- 
clares itself  aloud,  without  reticence  and  with- 
out disguise.  "When  all  the  other  gods  are 

72 


India 

no  more  than  disappearing  names,"  says  Max 
Miiller,  "there  are  left  only  the  Atman,  the 
subjective  self,  and  Brahma,  the  objective  self; 
and  the  supreme  knowledge  is  expressed  in 
these  words:  'Tat  Twam,  Hoc  tit';  'That  is 
You';  you,  your  true  self,  that  which  cannot  be 
taken  from  you  when  all  has  disappeared  that 
seemed  for  a  time  to  be  yours.  When  all 
created  things  vanish  like  a  dream  your  true 
ego  belongs  to  the  Eternal  Self:  the  Atman,  the 
personality  within  you,  is  the  true  Brahma : 
that  Brahma  from  whom  birth  and  death  di- 
vided you  for  a  moment,  but  who  receives  you 
again  into  his  bosom,  so  soon  as  you  return 
to  him."  1 

"The  'Rig-Veda,'  or  the  'Veda'  of  the  hymns, 
the  true  'Veda,'  the  'Veda'  par  excellence," 
continues  Max  Miiller,  "ends  in  the  'Upani- 
shads,'  or,  as  they  were  afterwards  called,  the 
'Vedanda.'  Now  the  dominant  note  of  the 
'Upanishads'  is  'Know  thyself;  that  is,  Know 
the  being  who  is  the  upholder  of  your  ego; 
learn  to  find  Him  and  to  know  Him  in  the 
Eternal  and  Supreme  Being,  the  One  Alone, 
who  is  the  upholder  of  the  whole  universe." 

"This  religion  at  its  ultimate  height,  the 
religion  of  the  Fanaprastha,  that  is,  of  the  old 
man,  the  man  who  has  paid  his  three  debts, 
whose  eyes  have  beheld  'the  son  of  his  son' 

*Max  Miiller,  "The  Origin  of  Religion." 
73 


The  Great  Secret 

and  who  withdraws  into  the  forest,  becomes 
purely  mental;  and  finally  self-examination,  in 
the  profoundest  meaning  of  the  word,  that  is, 
the  recognition  of  the  individual  self  as  one 
with  the  Eternal  Self,  becomes  the  only  oc- 
cupation which  is  still  permitted  to  him." 

"Search  for  the  Me  hidden  in  your  heart," 
says  the  "Mahabharata,"  the  final  echo  of  the 
great  doctrine;  "Brahma,  the  True  God,  is 
you  yourself."  This,  let  me  repeat,  is  the 
foundation  of  Vedic  thought,  and  it  is  from 
this  thought  that  all  the  rest  proceeds.  To 
recover  it  we  have  no  need  of  modern  theos- 
ophy,  which  has  but  confirmed  it  by  less  famil- 
iar texts  whose  authority  is  less  assured.  It 
was  never  secret,  but  by  its  very  magnitude  it 
escaped  the  gaze  of  those  who  could  not  under- 
stand it,  and  little  by  little,  as  the  gods  multi- 
plied and  stepped  down  to  the  level  of  mankind, 
it  was  lost  to  sight.  Its  very  nobility  made  it 
esoteric.  In  the  heroic  age  of  Vedism,  when 
almost  all  men,  having  done  their  duty  to  their 
parents  and  their  children,  used  to  withdraw 
into  the  forest,  there  peacefully  to  wait  for 
death,  retiring  within  themselves  and  seeking 
there  the  hidden  god  with  whom  they  were 
soon  to  be  confounded,  it  was  the  thought  of 
a  whole  people.  But  the  peoples  are  not 
long  faithful  to  the  heights.  To  avoid  losing 
all  touch  with  them  it  was  forced  to  descend, 

74 


India 

to  conceal  its  features,  to  mingle  with  the 
crowd  in  a  thousand  disguises.  Nevertheless 
we  always  discover  it  beneath  the  increasingly 
heavy  veils  with  which  it  cloaks  itself.  "Man 
is  the  key  to  the  universe,"  declared  the  funda- 
mental axiom  of  the  medieval  alchemists,  in  a 
voice  stifled  beneath  the  litter  of  illegible  texts 
and  undecipherable  conjuring-books,  as  Novalis, 
perhaps  without  realizing  that  he  was  redis- 
covering a  truth  many  thousands  of  years  old, 
indeed  almost  as  old  as  the  world,  once  more 
repeated  it  in  a  form  scarcely  altered,  when  he 
taught  that  "our  first  duty  is  the  search  for 
our  transcendental  ego." 

Abandoned  in  an  infinite  universe  in  which 
we  cannot  know  anything  but  ourselves,  is  not 
this,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  only  truth  that  has 
survived,  the  only  one  that  is  not  illusory,  and 
the  only  one  to  which  we  might  still  hope  to  re- 
turn, after  so  many  misadventures,  so  many 
erroneous  interpretations  in  which  we  failed  to 
recognize  it? 

24 

God,  or  the  First  Cause,  is  unknowable;  but 
being  everywhere  He  is  necessarily  within  us: 
it  is  therefore  within  ourselves  that  we  shall 
succeed  in  discovering  what  it  behooves  us  to 
know  of  Him.  These  are  the  two  supporting 
piers  of  the  arch  sustaining  the  primitive  re- 
75 


The  Great  Secret 

ligion  and  all  those  religions  which  spring  there- 
from, or,  at  least,  the  actual  though  secret 
doctrine  of  all  those  religions:  that  is,  of  all 
the  religions  known  to  us,  apart  from  the  fet- 
ishism of  utterly  barbarous  peoples.  It  found 
these  points  of  support  in  the  beginning,  or 
rather  in  what  we  call  the  beginning,  which 
must  have  had  behind  it  a  past  of  thousands, 
perhaps  millions,  of  years.  We  have  found  no 
others;  we  never  shall  find  others,  failing  an 
impossible  revelation — impossible  in  fact  if  not 
in  principle, — for  nothing  that  is  not  human 
or  divinely  human  can  reach  us.  We  have  re- 
turned to  the  point  whence  our  forefathers  set 
out;  and  the  day  on  which  humanity  discovers 
another  such  point  will  be  the  most  extraor- 
dinary day  that  will  have  shone  upon  our  planet 
since  its  birth. 

The  incarnations  of  God,  in  primitive  re- 
ligious thought,  are  merely  periodical  and  spo- 
radic externalizations,  dazzling  manifestations, 
synthetic  and  exceptional,  of  the  God  who  is  in 
every  human  being.  This  incarnation  is  uni- 
versal, and  latent  in  each  of  us;  but  while  the 
incarnation  is  regarded  as  a  privilege  for  the 
man  in  whom  it  occurs,  it  is  considered  a  sacri- 
fice on  the  part  of  the  god.  Vishna  willingly 
sacrifices  himself  when  he  descends  to  earth  in 
the  person  of  Krishna  or  Buddha.  Has  he 
likewise  sacrificed  himself  by  descending  to 
76 


India 

earth  in  the  rest  of  mankind?  Whence  comes 
this  idea  of  sacrifice?  It  is  a  mysterious  idea, 
dating  assuredly  from  traditions  of  great  an- 
tiquity; in  any  case,  it  does  not  appear  to  be 
purely  rational,  like  the  two  previous  concep- 
tions. Nowhere  is  it  explained  why  it  is  neces- 
sary that  an  emanation  of  God  should  descend 
into  man,  who  is  already  a  divine  emanation. 
Here  is  a  gap  which  is  not  bridged  by  the  myth 
of  the  Fall,  a  myth  which  is  likewise  unex- 
plained, unless  the  idea  in  question  is  based 
merely  upon  the  declaration  that  every  man  who 
surpasses  his  fellows,  whose  sight  is  keener 
than  theirs,  and  who  teaches  them  what  they 
cannot  yet  understand,  is  necessarily  misunder- 
stood, persecuted,  a  hapless  sacrifice. 

25 

This  idea,  whether  it  can  or  cannot  be  ex- 
plained, is  none  the  less  of  great  importance; 
for  it  seems  to  have  steered  primitive  moral- 
ity into  one  of  its  principal  highways.  Indeed, 
the  conception  of  the  unknowable,  while  it  set 
free  those  courageous  thinkers  who  adventured 
upon  its  naked  peaks,  was  powerless  to  afford 
more  than  a  negative  doctrine.  To  be  sure,  it 
dispersed  the  little  anthropomorphic  and  almost 
always  maleficent  gods,  but  in  their  place  it  left 
only  a  vast  and  silent  void.  On  the  other  hand, 
pantheism,  being  as  comprehensive  as  agnosti- 

77 


The  Great  Secret 

cism,  taught  that  as  God  was  everywhere  and 
all  things  were  God,  all  things  ought  to  be 
loved  and  respected;  but  it  followed  that  evil, 
or  at  least  that  which  man  is  forced  to  call 
evil,  was  divine,  just  as/  goodness  is  divine, 
so  that  it  must  be  loved  and  respected  equally 
with  goodness.  The  idea  was  too  stark,  too 
illimitable,  over-arching  the  two  poles  of  the 
universe  in  too  colossal  a  fashion;  man  did  not 
dare  to  involve  himself,  did  not  dare  to  select 
a  pathway. 

Lastly,  the  search  for  the  god  hidden  in  each 
of  us,  which  is  one  of  the  corollaries  of  panthe- 
ism, if  it  be  left  without  guidance,  could  only 
have  perilous  consequences.  There  are  within 
us  all  kinds  of  gods;  that  is,  all  sorts  of  in- 
stincts, thoughts,  or  passions,  which  may  be 
taken  for  gods.  Some  are  good  and  some  evil, 
and  the  evil  gods  are  often  more  numerous, 
and  in  any  case  more  readily  discoverable  than 
the  good.  The  true  God,  the  supremest  Deity 
and  the  most  immaterial,  reveals  Himself  only 
to  a  few.  This  God  being  thus  revealed — 
who  is,  after  all,  no  more  than  the  best  thoughts 
of  the  best  of  us, — He  had  to  call  upon 
Himself  the  attention  of  other  men,  to  make 
Himself  known  to  them,  to  impose  Himself 
upon  them;  and  it  is  perhaps  for  this  reason 
that  this  singular  myth,  which  fundamentally  is 
probably  no  more  than  the  recognition  of  a 

78 


India 

natural  and  human  phenomenon,  has  little  by 
little  obtruded  itself,  struck  root,  and  de- 
veloped. It  is  indeed  probable  enough,  like 
everything  else  connected  with  the  evolution  of 
mankind,  that  it  did  not  suddenly  spring  from 
a  single  mind,  but  dimly  took  shape,  slowly 
assuming  a  definite  form  in  the  course  of  un- 
numbered centuries  of  tentative  experiments. 

26 

Without  lingering  longer  over  this  enigma 
we  shall  confine  ourselves  to  considering  its 
influence  on  primitive  morality,  by  directing  the 
latter  from  the  very  outset  toward  other  pin- 
nacles than  those  to  which  the  understand- 
ing pointed  the  way.  In  its  absence  the  primi- 
tive morality  which  believed  itself  to  be  listen- 
ing to  a  hidden  God,  but  which  in  truth  was 
only  giving  ear  to  human  reason,  would  have 
been  no  more  than  a  morality  of  the  brain  that 
might  have  been  deflected  toward  a  barren  con- 
templation or  a  cold,  rigid,  austere,  and  im- 
placable rationalism;  for  the  reason  alone,  even 
when  it  reaches  the  loftiest  heights  and  is  taken 
for  the  voice  of  God,  is  not  enough  to  guide 
mankind  toward  the  summits  of  abnegation, 
goodness,  and  love.  The  example  of  an  in- 
itial sacrifice  curbed  its  severity,  launching  it 
in  another  direction  and  toward  a  goal  of  which 
it  might  perhaps  in  the  end  have  caught  a 

79 


The  Great  Secret 

glimpse,  but  which  it  would  not  have  reached 
until  very  much  later,  after  many  grievous 
mistakes. 

Is  it  upon  this  myth  of  incarnation  that  the 
dogma  has  grafted  itself,  although  properly 
speaking  there  are  no  dogmas  in  the  Oriental 
religions — the  dogma  of  reincarnation  in 
which  are  found  all  the  sanctions  and  all  the 
rewards  of  the  primitive  religion?  The  es- 
sential principle  of  man,  the  basis  of  his  ego, 
being  divine  and  immortal,  after  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  body  which  has  for  the  time 
being  divorced  it  from  its  spiritual  origin, 
should  logically  return  to  that  origin.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  invisible  God  having 
through  the  medium  of  the  great  incarnations 
introduced  into  morality  the  conception  of  good 
and  evil,  it  did  not  seem  admissible  that  the 
soul,  which  had  not  listened  to  its  own  voice 
or  to  that  of  the  divine  teachers,  and  which 
had  become  more  or  less  soiled  by  its  earthly 
life,  should  be  able,  at  once  and  without  pre- 
vious purification,  to  return  to  the  immaculate 
ocean  of  the  Eternal  Spirit.  From  incarnation 
to  reincarnation  there  was  only  a  step,  which, 
without  doubt,  was  taken  all  but  unconsciously; 
from  reincarnation  to  successive  reincarnations 
and  purifications  the  transition  was  even  sim- 
pler; and  from  these  proceeds  the  whole  of 
the  Hindu  moral  philosophy,  with  its  Karma, 
80 


India 

•vhich  after  all  is  only  the  judicial  record  of 
the  soul,  a  record  which  is  always  up  to  date, 
becoming  worse  or  better  in  the  course  of  its 
palingeneses,  until  the  attainment  of  Nirvana; 
which  is  not,  as  it  is  too  often  described,  an 
annihilation  or  a  dispersal  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Deity,  nor  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  a  reunion 
with  God,  coinciding  with  the  perfecting  of 
the  human  spirit  freed  of  matter,  an  absolute 
acquiescence  in  the  law,  an  unalterable  tran- 
quillity in  the  contemplation  of  that  which  ex- 
ists, a  disinterested  hope  in  that  which  ought 
to  be,  and  repose  in  the  absolute,  that  is,  in 
the  world  of  causes  in  which  all  the  illusions 
of  the  senses  disappear;  but  a  more  mysterious 
state  which  is  neither  perfect  happiness  nor 
annihilation,  but,  properly  speaking  and  once 
again,  the  Unknowable.  "That  Perfection  ex- 
ists after  death,"  says  a  text  contemporary  with 
the  Buddha,  revealing  the  meaning  of  Nirvana, 
which  had  then  become  esoteric: — "That  Per- 
fection both  exists  and  does  not  exist  after 
death,  that  likewise  is  not  true."  1 

As  Oldenberg  says  very  truly,  citing  this 
pasage  among  several  others  in  which  the  same 
admission  is  made:  "This  is  not  to  deny  Nir- 
vana or  Perfection,  or  to  conclude  that  it  does 
not  exist  at  all.  Here  the  spirit  has  reached 
the  brink  of  an  unfathomable  mystery.  Use- 

x"Sanyatta  Nikaya";  Vol.  II,  fol.  no  and  199. 
8l 


The  Great  Secret 

less  to  seek  to  disclose  it.  If  one  were  finally 
to  renounce  a  future  Eternity  one  would  speak 
in  another  fashion;  it  is  the  heart  that  takes 
refuge  behind  the  veil  of  the  mystery.  From 
the  mind  that  hesitates  to  admit  eternal  life 
as  conceivable  it  seeks  to  wrest  the  hope  of  a 
life  that  passes  all  understanding."  J 

All  this  amounts  to  a  repetition  of  the  old 
fundamental  admissions  that  in  respect  of  es- 
sentials we  know  nothing  and  can  know  noth- 
ing, while  it  is  also  a  fresh  proof  of  the  mag- 
nificent sincerity  and  the  lofty  and  sovereign 
wisdom  of  the  primitive  religion. 

Will  all  living  beings  end  by  attaining  Nir- 
vana? What  is  to  happen  in  that  case,  and 
why  is  it,  since  all  things  exist  from  all  eternity, 
that  all  have  not  already  reached  it?  To  these 
questions  and  others  of  a  like  nature  the  "Ve- 
das"  vouchsafed  only  a  disdainful  silence;  but 
some  of  the  Buddhist  texts,  and  among  them 
the  following,  discreetly  reply  to  those  who 
would  know  too  much: 

"This  the  Sublime  One  has  not  revealed, 
because  it  does  not  minister  to  salvation,  be- 
cause it  is  no  help  to  the  devout  life,  because  it 
does  not  conduce  to  detachment  from  earthly 
things,  to  the  annihilation  of  desire,  to  cessa- 
tion, to  repose,  to  knowledge,  to  illumination, 

1  Oldenberg,  Le  Bouddha;  p.  285. 


India 

to  Nirvana;  for  this  reason  the  Sublime  has 
revealed  nothing  relating  to  it." 

27 

Whatever  the  value  of  these  hypotheses,  it 
is  indubitable  that  the  moral  system  which  we 
find  proceeding  from  this  boundless  agnosti- 
cism and  pantheism  is  the  noblest,  the  purest, 
the  most  disinterested,  the  most  sensitive,  the 
most  thoroughly  investigated,  the  most  fastidi- 
ous, the  clearest,  the  completest  that  we  have 
as  yet  known  and  doubtless  could  ever  hope  to 
know. 

This  morality,  as  well  as  the  enigma  of  in- 
carnation and  sacrifice  of  which  we  have  just 
been  speaking,  and  many  other  points  which  we 
have  only  touched  upon,  ought  to  be  subjected 
to  a  special  examination  which  does  not  enter 
into  our  design.  It  will  suffice  to  recall  the 
fact  that  it  is  based  on  the  principle  of  succes- 
sive reincarnations  and  of  Karma. 

The  world,  properly  speaking,  was  not  cre- 
ated; there  is  no  word  in  Sanskrit  that  corre- 
sponds with  the  idea  of  creation,  just  as  there 
is  none  that  corresponds  with  the  conception  of 
nothingness.  The  universe  is  a  momentary  and 
doubtless  illusory  materialization  of  the  un- 
known and  spiritual  Cause.  Divided  from  the 
Spirit  which  is  its  proper  essence,  actual  and 

83 


The  Great  Secret 

eternal,  matter  tends  to  return  to  it  through  all 
the  phases  of  evolution.  Starting  from  be- 
neath the  mineral  stage,  passing  through  plant 
and  animal,  ending  in  man,  and  outstripping 
him,  it  is  transformed  and  spiritualized  until 
it  is  sufficiently  pure  to  return  to  its  point  of 
origin.  This  purification  often  demands  a  long 
series  of  reincarnations,  but  it  is  possible  to  re- 
duce their  number,  and  even  to  set  a  term  to 
them,  by  an  intensive  spiritualization,  heroic 
and  absolute,  which  at  death,  and  sometimes 
even  during  life,  leads  the  soul  back  to  the 
bosom  of  Brahma. 

This  explanation  of  the  inexplicable,  despite 
the  objections  which  suggest  themselves,  nota- 
bly in  respect  of  the  origin  and  necessity  of 
matter,  or  of  evil,  which  remain  obscure,  is  as 
good  as  any  other,  and  has  the  advantage  of 
being  the  earliest  in  date,  apart  from  the  fact 
that  it  is  the  most  comprehensive,  embracing 
all  that  can  be  imagined,  setting  out  from  the 
great  spiritual  principle  to  which,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  any  other  of  an  acceptable  nature, 
we  are  more  and  more  imperiously  compelled 
to  return. 

In  any  case,  as  it  has  proved,  it  has  favored 
more  than  any  other  the  birth  and  development 
of  a  morality  to  which  man  had  never  attained, 
and  which,  so  far,  he  has  never  surpassed. 

To  give  a  sufficient  idea  of  this  morality 
84 


India 

would  require  more  space  than  is  at  my  dis- 
posal, and  destroy  the  scheme  of  this  inquiry. 
The  wonderful  thing  about  this  morality, 
when  we  consider  it  near  its  source,  where  it 
still  retains  its  purity,  is  that  it  is  wholly  in- 
ternal, wholly  spiritual.  It  finds  its  sanctions 
and  its  rewards  only  in  our  own  hearts.  There 
is  no  Judge  awaiting  the  soul  on  its  release 
from  the  body;  no  paradise  and  no  hell,  for 
hell  was  a  later  development.  The  soul  it- 
self, the  soul  alone,  is  its  Judge,  its  heaven,  or 
its  hell.  It  encounters  nothing,  no  one.  It 
has  no  need  to  judge  itself,  for  it  sees  itself  as 
it  is,  as  its  thoughts  and  actions  have  made  it, 
at  the  close  of  this  life  and  of  previous  lives. 
It  sees  itself,  in  short,  in  its  entirety,  in  the 
infallible  mirror  which  death  holds  up  to  it, 
and  realizes  that  it  is  its  own  happiness,  its 
own  misery.  Happiness  and  suffering  are  self- 
created.  It  is  alone  in  the  infinite;  there  is 
no  God  above  it  to  smile  upon  it  or  to  fill  it 
with  terror;  the  God  whom  it  has  disappointed, 
displeased,  or  satisfied  is  itself.  Its  condemna- 
tion or  its  absolution  depend  upon  that  which 
it  has  become.  It  cannot  escape  from  itself 
to  go  elsewhere  where  it  might  be  more  fortu- 
nate. It  cannot  breathe  save  in  the  atmosphere 
which  it  has  created  for  itself;  it  is  its  own  at- 
mosphere, its  own  world,  its  own  environment; 
and  it  must  uplift  and  purify  itself  in  order 

85 


The  Great  Secret 

that  this  world  and  this  environment  may  be 
purified  and  uplifted,  expanding  with  it  and 
around  it. 

"The  soul,"  says  Manu,  "is  its  own  witness; 
the  soul  is  its  own  refuge;  never  despise  your 
soul,  the  sovereign  witness  of  mankind ! 

"The  wicked  say:  'No  one  sees  us';  but  the 
gods  are  watching  them,  as  is  the  Spirit  en- 
throned within  them." 

"O  man!  when  thou  sayest  to  thyself:  'I 
am  alone  with  myself,'  there  dwells  forever 
in  thy  heart  this  supreme  Spirit,  the  attentive 
and  silent  observer  of  all  good  and  all  evil. 

"This  Spirit  enthroned  in  thy  heart  is  a  strict 
judge,  an  inflexible  avenger;  he  is  Yama,  the 
Judge  of  the  Dead."  x 

28 

Between  birth  and  death,  which  is  but  a 
new  birth,  the  "Laws  of  Manu"  distinguish 
five  stages:  conception,  childhood,  the  noviti- 
ate (or  period  of  studying  the  sciences,  divine 
and  human),  fatherhood,  and,  last  of  all,  the 
stage  of  the  anchorite  preparing  for  death. 
Each  of  these  periods  has  its  duties,  which  must 
be  accomplished  before  a  man  may  look  for- 
ward to  withdrawal  into  the  forest.  While 
awaiting  this  hour,  desired  above  all,  "resigna- 
tion," says  Manu,  "the  act  of  returning  good 

i"Manu";  VIII,  84,  85,  91,  92. 

86 


India 

for  evil,  temperance,  honesty,  purity,  chastity, 
repression  of  the  senses,  knowledge  of  the  sa- 
cred books,  worship  of  truth,  and  abstention 
from  anger :  such  are  the  ten  virtues  of  which 
duty  consists."  * 

The  aim  of  our  life  on  this  earth  is  to  set 
a  limit  to  our  reincarnations,  for  reincarna- 
tion is  a  punishment  which  the  soul  is  com- 
pelled to  inflict  upon  itself  for  so  long  as  it 
does  not  feel  that  it  is  pure  enough  to  return 
to  God.  "To  attain  the  last  phase,"  says 
Manu,  "never  again  to  be  reborn  upon  this 
earth — that  is  the  ideal.  To  be  assured  of 
eternal  happiness — assured  that  the  earth  shall 
no  longer  behold  the  soul  returning  to  cloak  it- 
self once  again  in  its  gross  substance !" 

This  purification,  this  progressive  dema- 
terialization,  this  renunciation  of  all  egoism, 
begins  when  life  begins  and  is  continued  through 
all  the  phases  of  existence;  but  one  must  first 
of  all  accomplish  all  the  duties  of  this  active 
existence.  "For  all  of  you  must  know,"  say  the 
sacred  books,  "that  none  of  you  shall  achieve 
absorption  into  the  bosom  of  Brahma  by  prayer 
alone;  and  the  mysterious  monosyllable  will 
not  efface  your  latest  defilement,  except  you 
reach  the  threshold  of  the  future  life  laden 
with  good  works;  and  the  most  meritorious  of 
these  works  will  be  those  which  are  based  upon 

i"Manu";  VI,  92- 

87 


The  Great  Secret 

the  motives  of  charity  and  love  for  one's 
neighbor." 

"One  single  good  action,"  says  Manu 
further,  uis  worth  more  than  a  thousand  good 
thoughts,  and  those  who  fulfil  their  obligations 
are  superior  to  those  who  perceive  them." 

"Let  the  sage  constantly  observe  the  moral 
obligations  (Yamas)  more  attentively  than  the 
religious  duties  (Niyamas)  for  he  who  neg- 
lects the  moral  duties  is  losing  ground  even  if 
he  observes  his  religious  obligations." 

29 

There  are  in  the  life  of  man  two  plainly 
distinguished  periods :  the  active  or  social  phase 
during  which  he  establishes  his  family,  assures 
the  fate  of  his  posterity,  and  tills  the  soil  with 
his  own  hands,  fulfilling  the  humble  duties  of 
every-day  life  toward  his  relatives  and  those 
about  him.  For  these  yet  ungodly  days  abound 
in  the  most  angelic  precepts  of  resignation,  of 
respect  for  life,  of  patience  and  love. 

"The  ills  which  we  inflict  upon  our  neigh- 
bor," says  Krishna,  "pursue  us  as  our  shadows 
follow  our  bodies. 

"Just  as  the  earth  upholds  those  that  trample 
it  underfoot  and  rend  its  bosom  with  the  plow, 
so  we  should  return  good  for  evil. 

"Let  all  men  remember  that  self-respect  and 
love  for  one's  neighbor  stand  above  all  things. 


India 

"He  who  fulfils  all  his  obligations  to  please 
God  only  and  without  thinking  of  future  re- 
ward is  sure  of  immortal  happiness.  1 

"If  a  pious  action  proceeds  from  the  hope 
of  reward  in  this  world  or  the  next,  that  ac- 
tion is  described  as  interested.  But  that 
which  has  no  other  motive  than  the  knowledge 
and  love  of  God  is  said  to  be  disinterested."  2 
(Let  us  reflect  for  a  moment  upon  this  saying, 
many  thousands  of  years  old:  one  of  those 
sayings  which  we  can  repeat  to-day  without 
the  change  of  a  syllable,  for  here  God,  as 
in  all  the  Vedic  literature,  is  the  best  and 
eternal  part  of  ourselves  and  of  the  universe.) 

"The  man  whose  religious  actions  are  all 
interested  attains  the  rank  of  the  saints  and  the 
angels  [Devas].  But  he  whose  pious  actions 
are  all  disinterested  divests  himself  forever  of 
the  five  elements,  to  acquire  immortality  in  the 
Great  Soul." 

"Of  all  things  that  purify  man  purity  in 
the  acquisition  of  wealth  is  the  best.  He  who 
retains  his  purity  while  becoming  rich  is  truly 
pure,  not  he  who  purifies  himself  with  earth 
and  water." 

"Learned  men  purify  themselves  by  the  for- 
giveness of  trespasses,  alms,  and  prayer.  The 
understanding  is  purified  by  knowledge." 

i"Manu";  II,  15. 
*lbid.;  XII,  89. 

89 


The  Great  Secret 

"The  hand  of  a  craftsman  is  always  pure 
while  he  is  working." 

"Although  the  conduct  of  her  husband  be 
blameworthy,  although  he  may  abandon  him- 
self to  other  loves  and  may  be  without  good 
qualities,  a  virtuous  woman  must  always  revere 
him  as  a  god." 

"He  who  has  defiled  the  water  by  some  im- 
purity must  live  upon  alms  only  for  a  full 
month." 

"In  order  not  to  cause  the  death  of  any 
living  creature,  let  the  Sannyasi  J  [that  is,  the 
mendicant  ascetic],  by  night  as  well  as  by 
day,  even  at  the  risk  of  injury,  walk  with  his 
gaze  upon  the  ground."  2 

"For  having  on  one  occasion  only,  and  with- 
out any  ill  intention,  cut  down  trees  bearing 
fruit,  or  bushes,  or  tree-creepers,  or  climbing 
plants,  or  crawling  plants  in  flower,  one  must 
repeat  a  hundred  prayers  from  the  'Rig- 
Veda.'  " 

"If  a  man  idly  uproots  cultivated  plants  or 
plants  which  have  sprung  up  spontaneously  in 
the  forest,  he  must  follow  a  cow  for  a  whole 
day  and  take  no  food  but  milk." 

"By  a  confession  made  in  public,  by  repent- 
ance, by  piety,  by  the  recitation  of  sacred 
prayers,  a  sinner  may  be  acquitted  of  his  offense, 

1  Literally,   "the   abandoner." — TRANS. 

2"Manu";  XII,  90;  V,  106,  107,  129,  154;  XI,  255;  VI,  68. 

90 


India 

as  well  as  by  giving  alms,  when  he  finds  it 
impossible  to  perform  the  other  penance." 

"In  proportion  as  his  soul  regrets  a  bad  ac- 
tion, so  far  his  body  is  relieved  of  the  burden 
of  this  perverse  action." 

"Success  in  all  worldly  affairs  depends  upon 
the  laws  of  destiny,  controlled  by  the  actions 
of  mortals  in  their  previous  lives,  and  the 
conduct  of  the  individual;  the  decrees  of  destiny 
are  a  mystery;  we  must  accordingly  have  re- 
course to  means  which  depend  upon  man." 

"Justice  is  the  sole  friend  who  accompanies 
man  after  death,  since  all  affection  is  subject 
to  the  destruction  suffered  by  the  body."  1 

"If  he  who  strikes  you  drops  the  staff  which 
he  has  used,  pick  it  up  and  return  it  to  him 
without  complaint." 

"You  will  not  abandon  animals  in  their  old 
age,  remembering  what  services  they  have 
rendered  you."  2 

"He  who  despises  a  woman  despises  his 
mother.  The  tears  of  women  draw  down  the 
fire  of  heaven  upon  those  that  make  them 
flow." 

"The  upright  man  may  fall  beneath  the  blows 
of  the  wicked,  as  does  the  sandal-tree,  which, 
when  it  is  felled,  perfumes  the  ax  that  lays  it 
low."  3 

1<(Manu";  XI,  142,  144,  227,  229;  VII,  205. 
2"Sama  Veda." 
»  "Vradasa." 

91 


The  Great  Secret 

"To  carry  the  three  staves  of  the  ascetic, 
to  keep  silence,  to  wear  the  hair  in  a  plait, 
to  shave  the  head,  to  clothe  one's  self  in  gar- 
ments of  bark  or  skins,  to  say  prayers  and  per- 
form ablutions,  to  celebrate  the  Agnihotra,  to 
dwell  in  the  forest,  to  allow  the  body  to  be- 
come emaciated — all  this  is  useless  if  the  heart 
is  not  pure." 

"He  who,  whatever  pains  he  may  spend 
on  himself,  practises  tranquillity  of  mind,  who 
is  calm,  resigned,  restrained,  and  chaste,  and 
has  ceased  to  find  fault  with  others,  that  man 
is  truly  a  Brahman,  a  Shraman  [an  ascetic], 
a  Bhikshu  [a  mendicant  friar]." 

"O  Bharata,  of  what  avail  is  the  forest  to 
him  who  has  mastered  himself,  and  of  what 
avail  is  it  to  him  who  has  not  mastered  him- 
self? Wherever  there  lives  a  man  who  has 
mastered  himself,  there  is  the  forest,  there  is 
the  hermitage." 

"If  the  wise  man  stay  at  home,  whatever 
care  he  may  take  of  himself,  if  all  the  days  of 
his  life  he  is  always  pure  and  full  of  love,  he  is 
delivered  from  all  evil." 

"It  is  not  the  hermitage  that  makes  the 
virtuous  man;  virtue  comes  only  with  practice. 
Therefore  let  no  man  do  unto  others  that 
which  would  cause  pain  to  himself." 

"The  world  is  sustained  by  every  action 
whose  sole  object  is  sacrifice;  that  is,  the  volun- 

92 


India 

tary  gift  of  self.  It  is  in  making  this  volun- 
tary gift  that  man  should  perform  the  action, 
without  respect  of  usage.  The  sole  object  of 
action  should  be  to  serve  others.  He  who  sees 
inaction  in  action  and  action  in  inaction  is  wise 
among  men:  he  is  attuned  to  the  true  principles, 
whatever  action  he  may  perform.  Such  a  man, 
who  has  renounced  all  interest  in  the  result  of 
his  action,  and  is  always  content,  depending  up- 
on no  one,  although  he  may  perform  actions, 
is  as  one  who  does  not  perform  them.  All 
his  thoughts,  stamped  with  wisdom,  and  all  his 
actions,  consisting  of  sacrifice,  are  as  though 
faded  into  air."  1 

30 

There,  taken  at  random,  from  an  enormous 
treasury  which  is  still  partly  unknown,  are  a 
few  words  of  counsel,  thousands  of  years  old, 
which,  long  before  the  advent  of  Christianity, 
guided  men  of  good  will  to  the  border  of  the 
forest.  Then,  as  Manu  says,  "when  the  head 
of  the  family  sees  his  skin  grow  wrinkled  and 
his  hair  turn  white,  when  he  beholds  the  son 
of  his  son" ;  when  he  has  no  further  obligations 
to  fulfil;  when  no  one  has  further  need  of  his 
assistance,  then,  whether  he  be  the  richest 
merchant  of  the  city  or  the  poorest  peasant 

1"Vanaparva";  13,445:  "Parables  of  Buddhgosha"; 
"Cantiparva";  5951:  "Vanaparva;  13,550:  "Laws  of 
Yajnavalkya";  III,  65:  "Bhaghavat-Gita." 

93 


The  Great  Secret 

of  the  village,  he  may  at  last  devote  himself 
to  things  eternal,  leaving  his  wife,  his  children, 
his  kinsfolk,  his  friends,  and,  "taking  a  gazelle- 
skin  or  a  cloak  of  bark,"  may  withdraw  into 
solitude,  burying  himself  in  the  vast  tropical 
forest,  forgetting  his  body  and  the  vain  ideas 
born  of  it,  and  giving  ear  to  the  voice  of  the 
God  hidden  in  the  depths  of  his  being;  the 
voice  "of  the  unseen  traveler,"  in  the  words 
of  the  "Brahman  of  the  Hundred  Paths";  "the 
voice  of  him  who,  understanding,  is  not  under- 
stood; of  the  thinker  of  whom  none  thinks; 
of  him  who  knows  but  is  not  known;  of  the 
Atman,  the  inner  guide,  the  imperishable,  apart 
from  whom  there  is  only  suffering."  He  may 
meditate  on  the  infinity  of  space,  the  infinity 
of  reason,  and  "the  non-existence  of  nothing" ; 
may  seize  the  moment  of  illumination  which 
brings  with  it  "the  deliverance  which  no  one 
can  teach,  which  each  must  find  for  himself, 
which  is  ineffable,"  and  may  purify  his  soul 
in  order  to  spare  it,  if  that  be  possible,  yet 
another  return  to  earth. 

Having  reached  this  stage,  "let  him  not  wish 
for  death;  let  him  not  wish  for  life.  Like  a 
harvester  who,  at  the  fall  of  night,  waits 
quietly  for  his  wages  at  his  master's  door,  let 
him  wait  until  the  moment  has  arrived." 

"Let  him  meditate,  with  the  most  exclusive 
application  of  the  intellect,  upon  the  subtle  and 

94 


India 

indivisible  nature  of  the  Supreme  mind,  and  on 
its  existence  in  the  bodies  of  the  highest  and 
lowest  of  created  things." 

"Meditating  with  joy  upon  the  Supreme  Be- 
ing, having  need  of  nothing,  inaccessible  to  any 
desire  of  the  senses,  without  other  society  than 
his  own  soul  and  the  thought  of  God,  let  him 
live  in  the  constant  expectation  of  eternal  bliss." 

"For  the  chiefest  of  all  his  obligations  is  to 
acquire  knowledge  of  the  Supreme  Mind;  and 
this  is  the  first  of  all  the  sciences,  for  this  alone 
confers  immortality  upon  man." 

"Thus  the  man  who  discovers  the  Supreme 
Mind  in  his  own  mind,  and  present  in  all  liv- 
ing creatures,  will  show  himself  the  same  to  all, 
and  will  thus  assure  himself  of  the  happiest 
fate,  that  of  being  finally  absorbed  into  the 
bosom  of  Brahma."  x 

"Having  thus  abandoned  all  pious  practices 
and  acts  of  austere  devotion,  applying  his  in- 
tellect solely  to  the  contemplation  of  the  great 
First  Cause,  exempt  from  all  evil  desires,  his 
soul  is  already  on  the  threshold  of  Swarga, 
while  his  mortal  envelope  is  still  flickering  like 
the  last  glimmer  of  a  dying  lamp."  2 

31 
Almost  all  the  foregoing,  let  us  remember, 

1('Manu";  VI,  45,  65,  49;  XII,  85,  125. 
*lbid.;  VI,  96. 

95 


The  Great  Secret 

is  long  previous  to  Buddhism,  dating  from  the 
origins  of  Brahmanism,  and  is  directly  related 
to  the  "Vedas."  Let  us  agree  that  this  system 
of  ethics,  of  which  I  have  been  unable  to 
give  more  than  the  slightest  survey,  while  the 
first  ever  known  to  man,  is  also  the  loftiest 
which  he  has  ever  practised.  It  proceeds  from 
a  principle  which  we  cannot  contest  even  to-day, 
with  all  that  we  believe  ourselves  to  have 
learned;  namely,  that  man,  with  all  that  suro 
rounds  him,  is  but  a  sort  of  emanation,  an 
ephemeral  materialization,  of  the  unknown 
spiritual  cause  to  which  it  must  needs  return, 
and  it  merely  deduces,  with  incomparable 
beauty,  nobility,  and  logic,  the  consequences  of 
this  principle.  There  is  no  extra-terrestrial  re- 
velation, no  Sinai,  no  thunder  in  the  heavens, 
no  god  especially  sent  down  upon  our  planet. 
There  was  no  need  for  him  to  descend  hither, 
for  he  was  here  already,  in  the  hearts  of  all 
men,  since  all  men  are  but  a  part  of  him  and 
cannot  be  otherwise.  They  question  this  god, 
who  seems  to  dwell  in  their  hearts,  their  minds; 
in  a  word,  in  that  immaterial  principle  which 
gives  life  to  their  bodies.  He  does  not  tell 
them,  it  is  true — or  perhaps  he  does  tell  them, 
but  they  cannot  understand  him — why,  for  the 
time  being,  he  appears  to  have  divorced  them 
from  himself;  and  we  have  here  a  postulate — 
the  origin  of  evil  and  the  necessity  of  suffering 
96 


India 

— as  inaccessible  as  the  mystery  of  the  First 
Cause :  with  this  difference,  that  the  mystery  of 
the  First  Cause  was  inevitable,  whereas  the  nec- 
essity of  evil  and  suffering  is  incomprehensible. 
But  once  the  postulate  is  granted,  all  the  rest 
clears  up  and  unfolds  itself  like  a  syllogism. 
Matter  is  that  which  divides  us  from  God; 
the  spirit  is  that  which  unites  us  to  Him;  the 
spirit  therefore  must  prevail  over  matter.  But 
the  spirit  is  not  merely  the  understanding;  it 
is  also  the  heart;  it  is  emotion;  it  is  all  that 
is  not  material;  so  that  in  all  its  forms  it  must 
needs  purify  itself,  reaching  forth  and  uplifting 
itself,  to  triumph  over  matter.  There  never 
was  and  never  could  be,  I  believe,  a  more  im- 
pressive spiritualization  than  this,  nor  more 
logical,  more  unassailable,  more  realistic,  in  the 
sense  that  it  is  founded  only  on  realities;  and 
never  one  more  divinely  human.  Certain  it 
is  that  after  so  many  centuries,  after  so  many 
acquisitions,  so  many  experiences,  we  find  our- 
selves back  at  the  same  point.  Starting,  like 
our  predecessors,  from  the  unknowable,  we  can 
come  to  no  other  conclusion,  and  we  could  not 
express  it  better.  Nothing  could  excel  the 
stupendous  effort  of  their  speech,  unless  it  were 
a  silent  resignation,  preferable  in  theory,  but 
in  practice  leading  only  to  an  inert  and  de- 
spairing ignorance. 


97 


CHAPTER  III 

EGYPT 


WE  have  already  considered,  in  speaking 
of  Nu,  Turn,  and  Phtah,  the  idea 
which  the  Egyptians  formed  of  the  First  Cause, 
and  of  the  creation,  or  rather,  the  emanation  or 
manifestation,  of  the  universe.  This  idea — 
as  we  know  it,  at  least,  from  the  translation, 
probably  incomplete,  of  the  hieroglyphs, — 
though  less  striking  in  form,  less  profound  and 
less  metaphysical,  is  analogous  to  that  of  the 
"Vedas"  and  reveals  a  common  source. 

Immediately  following  the  riddle  of  the 
First  Cause  they,  too,  inevitably  encountered 
the  insoluble  problem  of  the  origin  of  evil,  and 
although  they  did  not  venture  to  probe  into  it 
very  deeply,  they  achieved  a  solution  of  it 
which,  though  paler  and  more  evasive,  is  at 
bottom  almost  similar  to  that  of  the  Hindus. 
In  the  cult  of  Osiris  spirit  and  matter  are  known 
as  Light  and  Darkness,  and  Set,  the  antagonist 
of  Ra,  the  sun-god,  in  the  myths  of  Ra,  Osiris, 
and  Horus,  is  not  a  god  of  evil,"  says  Le  Page 
Renouf,  "but  represents  a  physical  reality,  a 
constant  law  of  nature."  *  He  is  a  god  as 

1  Op.  cit.;  p.  115. 

98 


Egypt 

real  as  his  adversaries  and  his  cult  is  as  ancient 
as  theirs.  Like  them  he  has  his  priests,  and  is 
the  offspring  of  the  same  unknown  Cause.  So 
little  can  he  be  divided  from  the  Power  opposed 
to  him  that  on  certain  monuments  the  heads 
of  Horus  and  Set  grow  upon  the  same  body, 
making  but  one  god. 

After  the  same  confessions  of  ignorance, 
here,  as  in  India,  the  myth  of  incarnation  pro- 
ceeds to  define  and  control  an  ethic  which, 
emerging  from  the  unknowable,  could  not  take 
shape  and  could  not  be  known  except  in  and  by 
man.  Osiris,  Horus,  and  Thoth  or  Hermes, 
who  five  times  put  on  human  form — or  so  the 
occultists  tell  us — are  but  the  more  memora- 
ble incarnations  of  the  god  who  dwells  in  each 
of  us.  From  these  incarnations  arises,  with 
less  refulgence,  less  abundance,  less  power — 
for  the  Egyptian  genius  has  not  the  spacious- 
ness, the  exaltation,  the  power  of  abstraction 
that  mark  the  Hindu  genius — an  ethic  of  a 
more  lowly  and  earthly  character,  but  of  the 
same  nature  as  that  of  Manu,  Krishna,  and 
Buddha;  or  rather  of  those  who  in  the  night 
of  the  ages  preceded  Manu,  Krishna,  and  Bud- 
dha. This  ethical  system  is  found  in  the  "Book 
of  the  Dead"  and  in  sepulchral  inscriptions. 
Some  of  the  papyri  of  the  "Book  of  the  Dead" 
are  more  than  four  thousand  years  old,  but  some 
of  the  texts  from  the  same  book,  which  were 
99 


The  Great  Secret 

found  on  nearly  all  the  tombs  and  sarcophagi, 
are  probably  still  more  ancient.  They  are, 
with  the  cuneiform  inscriptions,  the  most  an- 
cient writings  of  known  date  possessed  by  man- 
kind. 

The  most  venerable  of  moral  codes,  the 
work  of  Phtahotep,  still  imperfectly  deciph- 
ered, contemporary  with  the  pyramids,  is 
clothed  in  the  authority  of  an  ancestry  infi- 
nitely more  remote.  "Not  one  of  the  Christian 
virtues,"  says  F.  J.  Chapas,  one  of  the  first  of 
the  great  Egyptologists,  "has  been  forgotten 
in  the  Egyptian  system  of  ethics.  Pity,  char- 
ity, kindness,  self-control  in  speech  and  action, 
-chastity,  the  protection  of  the  weak,  benevo- 
lence toward  the  lowly,  deference  toward  supe- 
riors, respect  for  the  property  of  others,  even 
to  the  smallest  details,  all  are  expressed  in 
admirable  language." 


"I  have  not  injured  a  child,"  says  a  funeral 
inscription,  "I  have  not  oppressed  a  widow, 
I  have  not  ill-treated  a  herdsman.  During  my 
lifetime  no  one  went  a-begging,  and  when  the 
years  of  famine  came  I  tilled  all  the  soil  of  the 
province,  feeding  all  its  inhabitants,  and  I 
so  ordered  matters  that  the  widow  was  as 
though  she  had  not  lost  her  husband."  1 

1  Inscriptions  of  Ameni,  Denkmdler;  II,   X2z. 
IOO 


Egypt 

Another  inscription  commemorates  "the 
father  of  the  defenseless,  the  stay  of  those  who 
were  motherless,  the  terror  of  the  evil-doer,  the 
protector  of  the  poor.  He  was  the  avenger  of 
those  who  had  been  despoiled  by  the  mighty. 
He  was  the  husband  of  the  widow  and  the 
refuge  of  the  orphan."  *  "He  was  the  pro- 
tector of  the  humble,  a  fruitful  palm  for  the  in- 
digent, the  nourishment  of  the  poor,  the  wealth 
of  the  feeble;  and  his  wisdom  was  at  the  service 
of  the  ignorant."  2  "I  was  the  bread  of  the 
hungry;  I  was  water  to  the  thirsty;  I  was  the 
cloak  of  the  naked  and  the  refuge  of  the  dis- 
tressed. What  I  did  for  them  God  had  done 
for  me,"  3  say  other  inscriptions,  always  re- 
turning to  the  same  theme  of  kindness,  justice, 
and  charity.  "Although  I  was  great  I  have 
always  behaved  as  though  I  were  humble.  I 
have  never  barred  the  way  to  one  who  was 
worthier  than  I;  I  have  always  repeated  what 
has  been  told  me  exactly  as  it  was  spoken.  I 
have  never  approved  that  which  was  base  and 
evil,  but  I  have  taken  pleasure  in  speaking  the 
truth.  The  sincerity  and  kindness  in  the  heart 
of  my  father  and  mother  were  repaid  to  them 
by  my  love.  I  was  the  joy  of  my  brethren 
and  the  friend  of  my  companions,  and  I  have 

1  Antuff-tablet,  Louvre;  C,  26. 

2  Borgmann,   Hieroglyphische  Inschriften;  Plate   VI,   line 
8;  Plates  VIII,  IX. 

1  British  Museum;   581. 

101 


TTNTVF.RSTTV  OF  CALIFORNIA 


The  Great  Secret 

entertained  the  passing  traveler;  my  doors 
were  open  to  those  who  came  from  abroad,  and 
I  gave  them  rest  and  refreshment.  What  my 
heart  dictated  to  me  I  did  not  hesitate  to  do."  l 

3 

In  the  "Book  of  the  Dead,"  when,  after  the 
long  and  terrible  crossing  of  the  Duat  (which 
is  not  the  Egyptian  Hades,  as  some  have  said, 
but  a  region  intermediate  between  death  and 
eternal  life),  the  soul  reached  the  land  of 
Menti,  which  later  was  known  as  Amenti,  it 
found  itself  confronted  by  Maat  or  Malt,  the 
most  mysterious  of  the  Egyptian  divinities. 
Maat  may  be  symbolized  by  a  straight  line; 
she  represents  the  law,  and  the  true  or  absolute 
justice.  Each  of  the  high  gods  claims  to  be 
her  master,  but  she  herself  admits  no  master. 
By  her  the  gods  live,  she  reigns  alone  upon  the 
earth,  in  the  heavens  and  the  world  beyond 
the  tomb;  she  is  at  once  the  mother  of  the  god 
who  created  her,  his  daughter,  and  the  god 
himself.  Before  Osiris,  seated  upon  the 
throne  of  judgment,  the  heart  of  the  dead 
man,  symbolizing  his  moral  nature,  is 
placed  in  one  of  the  scales  of  the  balance; 
in  the  other  scale  is  an  image  of  Maat.  Forty- 
two  divinities,  who  represent  the  forty-two  sins 
which  they  are  appointed  to  punish,  are  ranked 

1  Dumicben,   Kalenderinschriften;  XLXI. 
I O2 


Egypt 

behind  the  balance,  whose  pointer  is  watched 
by  Horus  while  Tehutin,  the  god  of  letters, 
writes  down  the  result  of  the  weighing.  All 
this  is  obviously  merely  an  allegorical  represen- 
tation, a  sort  of  pictoral  interpretation,  a  pro- 
jection upon  the  screen  of  this  world  of  that 
which  happens  in  the  other  world,  in  the  depths 
of  a  soul  or  a  conscience  undergoing  judgment 
after  death. 

Then,  if  the  trial  is  favorable,  an  extraor- 
dinary thing  come  to  pass,  which  reveals  the 
secret  meaning,  profound  and  unexpected,  of 
all  this  mythology:  the  man  becomes  god.  He 
becomes  Osiris  himself.  He  stands  forth  as 
identified  with  him  who  judges  him.  He  adds 
his  name  to  that  of  Osiris;  he  is  Osiris  so-and- 
so.  In  short,  he  discovers  himself  to  be  the 
unknown  god,  the  god  that  he  was  unawares. 
Hidden  in  the  depths  of  his  soul,  he  recog- 
nizes the  Eternal,  whom  he  had  sought  all  his 
life  long,  and  who,  at  length  set  free  by  his 
good  works  and  his  spiritual  efforts,  reveals 
himself  as  identical  with  the  god  to  whom  he 
had  given  ear,  the  god  whom  he  had  adored, 
seeking  to  draw  closer  to  him  by  taking  him 
for  his  model. 

This,  represented  by  a  different  imagery,  is 
the  absorption  of  the  purified  soul  into  the  bo- 
som of  Brahma,  the  return  to  divinity  of  what 
is  divine  in  man;  and  here  too,  beneath  the 
103 


The  Great  Secret 

dramatic  allegory,  the  soul  judges  itself  and 
recognizes  itself  as  worthy  to  return  to  its 
God. 


4 

Rudolph  Steiner,  who,  when  he  does  not 
lose  himself  in  visions — plausible,  perhaps,  but 
incapable  of  verification — of  the  prehistoric 
ages,  of  astral  negatives,  and  of  life  on  other 
planets,  is  a  shrewd  and  accurate  thinker,  has 
thrown  a  remarkable  light  upon  the  meaning  of 
this  judgment  and  of  the  identification  of  the 
soul  with  God.  "The  Osiris  Being,"  he  says, 
uis  merely  the  most  perfect  degree  of  the  hu- 
man being.  It  goes  without  saying  that  the 
Osiris  who  reigns  as  a  judge  over  the  external 
order  of  the  universe  is  himself  but  a  perfect 
man.  Between  the  human  state  and  the  divine 
there  is  but  a  difference  of  degree.  Man  is  in 
process  of  development;  at  the  end  of  his 
course  he  becomes  God.  According  to  this  con- 
ception God  is  an  eternal  becoming,  not  a  God 
complete  in  himself. 

"Such  being  the  universal  order,  it  is  evident 
that  he  alone  may  enter  into  the  life  of  Osiris 
who  has  already  become  an  Osiris  himself,  be- 
fore knocking  at  the  gate  of  the  eternal  temple. 
Therefore  the  highest  life  of  man  consists  in 
transforming  himself  into  Osiris.  Man  be- 
comes perfect  when  he  lives  as  Osiris,  when 
104 


Egypt 

he  makes  the  journey  that  Osiris  has  made. 
The  myth  of  Osiris  acquires  thereby  a  pro- 
founder  meaning.  The  god  becomes  the  pat- 
tern for  him  who  seeks  to  awaken  the  Eternal 
within  himself."  1 

5 

This  deification,  this  Osirification  of  the  soul 
of  the  upright  man,  has  always  astonished  the 
Egyptologists,  who  have  not  grasped  its  hid- 
den meaning  and  have  not  perceived  that  the 
soul  was  returning  to  the  Vedic  Nirvana  of 
which  it  is  merely  the  dramatized  reproduc- 
tion. But  there  are  the  authentic  texts,  and 
even  from  the  esoteric  point  of  view  it  is  not 
possible  to  attribute  another  meaning  to  them. 
The  basis  of  the  Egyptian  religion,  beneath  all 
the  parasitical  growths  of  vegetation  that  grad- 
ually became  so  enormous,  is  really  the  same  as 
that  of  the  Vedic  religion.  Starting  from  the 
same  point  of  departure  in  the  unknowable,  it 
is  the  worship  of  and  the  search  for  the  god 
in  man  and  the  return  of  man  to  the  godhead. 
The  upright  man — that  is,  the  man  who  all  his 
life  has  striven  to  find  the  Eternal  within  him- 
self, and  to  give  ear  to  its  voice, — when  liber- 
ated from  his  body,  does  not  merely  become 
Osiris;  but  just  as  Osiris  is  other  gods,  so  he 

1  Rudolph  Steiner.  Le  Mysore  Chretien  et  les  Mysteres 
antiques,  tr.  J.  Saurwein;  p.  170. 

105 


The  Great  Secret 

too  becomes  other  gods.  He  speaks  as  though 
he  were  Ra,  Turn,  Set,  Chnemu,  Horus,  and  so 
forth.  "Neither  men  nor  gods,  nor  the  spirits 
of  the  dead,  nor  men  past,  present,  and  future, 
whosoever  they  may  be,  have  any  further  power 
to  harm  him."  He  is  "He  who  goes  forward 
in  security."  His  name  is  "He  that  is  un- 
known to  men."  His  name  is  "Yesterday,  that 
sees  the  innumerable  days  passing  in  triumph 
along  the  ways  of  heaven."  "He  is  the  lord 
of  eternity.  He  is  the  master  of  the  royal 
crown  and  each  of  his  limbs  is  a  god." 


But  what  happens  if  the  sentence  is  not  fav- 
orable, if  the  soul  is  not  considered  worthy 
of  returning  to  the  Eternal,  of  becoming  once 
more  the  god  that  it  was?  Of  this  we  know 
nothing.  Of  all  that  has  been  said  in  respect 
of  punishments,  expiations,  and  purifying  trans- 
migration, nothing  is  based  on  any  authentic 
text.  "We  find  no  trace,"  says  Le  Page  Re- 
nouf,  "of  a  conception  of  this  kind  in  any  of 
the  Egyptian  texts  hitherto  discovered.  The 
transformations  after  death,  we  are  expressly 
informed,  depend  solely  on  the  will  of  the  de- 
ceased, or  of  his  genius."  1  That  is  to  say,  of 
his  soul.  Does  this  not  also  expressly  tell  us 

1  Le  Page  Renouf,  op.  cit.;  p.  183. 
1 06 


Egypt 

that  they  depend  entirely  on  the  soul's  judg- 
ment of  itself,  and  that  the  soul  alone  knows 
and  decides,  like  the  Hindu  soul  burdened  with 
its  Karma,  whether  it  is  worthy  or  not  to  re- 
enter  divinity?  In  other  words,  that  there  is 
no  heaven  or  hell,  except  within  us? 

But  what  becomes  of  it  if  it  does  not  con- 
sider itself  worthy  of  being  a  god?  Does  it 
wait,  or  does  it  undergo  reincarnation?  No 
Egyptian  text  enables  us  to  solve  the  problem; 
nor  is  there  any  trace  of  any  intermediate  state 
between  death  and  eternal  beatitude.  As  to 
this  point  the  funeral  rites  give  us  no  hint. 
They  seem  to  forecast  for  the  dead  man  a  life 
beyond  the  tomb,  precisely  resembling,  on  an- 
other plane,  the  life  which  he  used  to  lead  on 
earth.  But  these  rites  do  not  seem  to  refer 
to  the  soul  properly  so  called,  to  the  divine  prin- 
ciple. The  Egyptian  religion,  like  other  primi- 
tive religions,  distinguishes  three  portions  in 
man:  first,  the  physical  body;  secondly,  a  per- 
ishable spiritual  entity,  a  sort  of  reflection  of 
the  body  which  it  survived,  a  shadow,  or  rather 
a  double,  which  could  at  will  confound  itself 
with  the  mummy  or  detach  itself  therefrom; 
and,  thirdly,  a  purely  spiritual  principle,  the  ver- 
itable and  immortal  soul,  which,  after  the  judg- 
ment, became  a  god. 

The  double  that  left  the  body,  but  not  the 
107 


The  Great  Secret 

soul,  which  once  more  became  Osiris,  wandered 
wretchedly  between  the  visible  and  the  invisible 
worlds — as  the  discarnate  souls  of  our  spiritual- 
ists appear  to  do — unless  the  funeral  rites  came 
to  its  aidf  leading  it  back  to  and  keeping  it  by 
the  body  which  it  had  deserted.  The  whole  of 
this  ritual  sought  only  to  prolong  as  far  as  pos- 
sible the  existence  of  this  double,  by  supplying 
its  needs,  which  resembled  those  of  its  earthly 
life,  by  keeping  it  beside  its  incorruptible 
mummy,  and  tying  it  down  to  a  pleasant 
home. 

The  life  of  this  double  was  believed  to  be 
very  long.  A  tablet  in  the  Louvre  tells  us,  for 
example,  that  Psamtik,  son  of  Ut'ahor,  who 
lived  in  the  time  of  the  twenty-sixth  dynasty, 
was  a  priest  under  three  sovereigns  of  the  Great 
Pyramid,  who  had  been  dead  for  more  than 
two  thousand  years. 

This  idea  of  the  double,  as  Herbert  Spencer 
remarks,  is  universal.  "Everywhere  we  find  ex- 
pressed or  implied  the  belief  that  every  man  is 
double,  and  that  when  he  dies  his  other  self, 
whether  it  remains  close  at  hand  or  goes  far 
away,  may  return,  and  is  capable  of  injuring 
his  enemies  or  helping  his  friends." 

This  Egyptian  double  is  no  other  than  the 
Perisprite,  the  astral  Body,  of  the  occultists, 
that  discarnate  entity,  that  subconscious  being, 
1 08 


more  or  less  independent  of  the  body,  that  Un- 
known Guest,  with  whom  our  modern  meta- 
psychists  are  confronted,  despite  themselves, 
when  they  come  to  record  certain  hypnotic  or 
mediumistic  manifestations,  certain  phenomena 
of  telepathy,  of  action  at  a  distance,  of  mate- 
rialization, of  posthumous  apparition,  which 
would  otherwise  be  all  but  inexplicable.  Once 
again  the  ancient  religions  have  here  forestalled 
our  science,  perhaps  because  they  saw  farther 
into  the  future  and  with  greater  accuracy.  I 
say  perhaps;  for  if  the  life  of  the  double,  the 
astral  body  of  the  subconscious  entity  almost 
independent  of  the  brain,  can  scarcely  be  con- 
tested when  the  living  are  concerned,  it  may 
still  be  disputed  in  respect  of  the  dead.  One 
thing  is  certain,  that  a  number  of  extremely 
perplexing  facts  are  accumulating  in  confirma- 
tion of  this  existence.  It  is  only  their  inter- 
pretation that  is  still  doubtful.  But  the  an- 
cient Egyptian  hypothesis  is  becoming  more 
and  more  plausible.  It  refuted  beforehand, 
thousands  of  years  ago,  the  capital  objection  so 
often  made  to  the  spiritualists,  when  we  tell 
them  that  their  disembodied  spirits  are  merely 
poor,  incoherent,  and  bewildered  shades,  anx- 
ious before  all  else  to  establish  their  identity 
and  to  cling  to  their  former  existence ;  miserable 
phantoms  to  whom  death  has  revealed  nothing, 
109 


The  Great  Secret 

and  who  have  nothing  to  tell  us  of  their  life 
beyond  the  tomb,  a  pale  reflection  of  their  pre- 
vious existence.  It  is,  after  all,  quite  easy  to 
explain  why  the  disembodied  spirit  knows  no 
more  than  it  knew  during  its  earthly  life.  The 
Egyptian  double,  of  which  it  is  merely  the  rep- 
lica, was  not  the  true  soul,  the  immortal  soul, 
which,  if  Amenti's  judgment  of  it  were  favor- 
able, returned  to  the  god,  or  rather  once  more 
became  divine.  The  sepulchral  rites  did  not 
seek  to  concern  themselves  with  this  soul, 
whose  fate  was  determined  by  the  sentence  of 
Maat:  they  sought  only  to  render  less  precari- 
ous, less  pitiable,  and  less  liable  to  disintegra- 
tion the  posthumous  life  of  this  belated  ele- 
ment, this  species  of  spiritual  husk,  this  ner- 
vous, magnetic  or  fluid  phantom  which  was  once 
a  man  and  was  now  but  a  bundle  of  tenacious 
but  homeless  memories.  By  surrounding  him 
with  the  objects  of  these  memories  they  sought 
to  alleviate  the  passage  of  the  dead  man  to 
eternal  forgetfulness.  The  Egyptians  had  un- 
doubtedly examined  more  exactly  than  we  have 
done  the  evidence  for  the  existence  of  this  dou- 
ble, which  we  are  barely  beginning  to  suspect; 
for  their  civilization  (which  was  the  heir,  for 
that  matter,  of  long-lived  antecedent  civiliza- 
tions) was  far  more  ancient  than  our  own,  and 
more  inclined  toward  the  spiritual  and  invisible 
sides  of  life.  But  they  prejudged  nothing,  just 
no 


Egypt 

as  the  spiritualistic  hypothesis,  if  it  were  well 
propounded,  would  not  involve  any  precon- 
ceived ideas  of  the  destiny  of  the  soul  properly 
so  called. 

The  double  was  not  subjected  to  any  form 
of  trial.  Whether  a  man  had  been  good  or 
bad,  just  or  unjust,  he  had  a  right  to  the  same 
funeral  ceremonies  and  the  same  life  beyond 
the  tomb.  His  punishment  or  reward  was  in 
his  own  self:  it  was,  to  continue  to  be  what  he 
had  been;  to  pursue  the  mode  of  life,  whether 
noble  or  ignoble,  narrow  or  liberal,  intelligent 
or  stupid,  generous  or  selfish,  which  he  had  lived 
on  earth. 

Let  us  note  that  in  our  spiritualistic  manifes- 
tations likewise  there  is  no  question  of  reward 
or  punishment.  Our  disembodied  spirits,  even 
when  they  have  been  believers  during  life, 
hardly  ever  allude  in  any  way  to  a  posthumous 
trial,  a  hell,  a  heaven,  or  a  purgatory;  and  if  by 
exception  they  do  refer  to  them  we  may  almost 
certainly  suspect  some  telepathic  interpolation. 
They  are,  or,  if  you  prefer  it,  they  seem  to  be, 
just  what  they  were  during  their  lifetime :  more 
or  less  logical,  more  or  less  cultivated,  more  or 
less  intelligent,  more  or  less  headstrong,  ac- 
cording as  their  ideas  were  more  or  less  logical, 
or  cultivated,  or  intelligent,  or  headstrong. 
They  reap  only  what  they  have  sown  in  the 
spiritual  soil  of  this  world, 
in 


The  Great  Secret 

But  they — and  this  is  the  only  difference  be- 
tween them — have  not  been  subjected,  like 
the  Egyptian  double,  to  the  magic  incantation 
which,  wrongly  or  rightly,  for  weal  or  woe,  and 
in  violation  of  the  laws  of  nature,  bound  the 
double  to  its  physical  remains,  and  prevented 
it  from  drifting  like  flotsam  between  a  material 
world  in  which  it  could  live  no  longer  and  a 
spiritual  universe  which  it  seemed  it  was  for- 
bidden to  enter. 


7 

Thanks  to  this  solicitude,  thanks  to  this  cult, 
this  foresight,  was  the  double  happy?  I  dare 
not  affirm  as  much.  There  is  one  terrible  text 
— the  funeral  inscription  of  the  wife  of  Pasher- 
enpath — which  is  the  most  heart-rending  cry  of 
regret  and  distress  that  the  dead  have  ever  ad- 
dressed to  life.  It  is  true  that  this  inscription 
is  of  the  time  of  the  Ptolemies;  that  is,  of  the 
later  Egypt  corrupted  by  Greece,  two  or  three 
centuries  before  our  era.  It  reveals  the  deca- 
dence and  almost  the  death  of  this  Egyptian 
creed;  and — what  is  more  serious  and  more 
alarming — in  speaking  of  Amenti  it  seems  to 
confound  the  destiny  of  the  double  with  that 
of  the  immortal  soul.  Here  is  this  inscription, 
which  shows  us  what  uncertainty  overtakes  the 
most  firmly  established  and  most  positive  reli- 
112 


Egypt 

gions,  and  how,  when  their  course  is  run,  they 
plunge  us  once  more  into  the  darkness  of  the 
Great  Secret,  into  the  chaos  of  the  unknowable 
whence  they  emerged : 

"Oh,  my  brother,  my  husband,  do  not  cease 
to  drink,  to  eat,  to  empty  the  cup  of  joy,  to 
live  merrily  as  at  a  festival!  Let  thy  desires 
lead  thee,  day  by  day,  and  may  care  never  enter 
thy  heart  so  long  as  thou  livest  upon  the  earth. 
For  Amenti  is  the  country  of  lifeless  sleep  and 
of  darkness,  a  place  of  mourning  for  those  who 
dwell  therein.  They  sleep  in  their  effigies ;  they 
no  longer  wake  to  behold  their  brethren;  they 
recognize  neither  their  fathers  nor  their  moth- 
ers; their  hearts  are  indifferent  to  their  wives 
and  children.  On  the  earth  all  men  enjoy  the 
water  of  life,  but  here  thirst  encompasses  me. 
There  is  water  for  all  who  dwell  upon  the 
earth,  but  I  thirst  for  the  water  which  is  close 
beside  me.  I  know  not  where  I  am  since  I 
came  hither,  and  I  implore  the  running  water, 
I  implore  the  breeze  upon  the  river  bank,  that 
it  will  assuage  the  soreness  of  my  heart.  For 
as  for  the  God  who  is  here,  his  name  is  Abso- 
lute Death.  He  summons  all  men,  and  all 
come  to  him  trembling  with  fear.  With  him 
there  is  no  respect  for  men  or  for  gods;  with 
him  the  great  are  as  the  small.  One  fears  to 
pray  to  him  for  he  does  not  give  ear.  None 
come  hither  to  invoke  him,  since  he  shows  no 


The  Great  Secret 

favor  to  those  who  worship  him,  and  pays  no 
heed  to  the  offerings  laid  before  him."  1 

8 

And  what  of  reincarnation?  It  is  generally 
believed  that  Egypt  is  preeminently  the  land  of 
palingenesis  and  metempsychosis.  Nothing  of 
the  sort:  not  a  single  Egyptian  text  alludes  to 
such  matters.  It  is  true  that  on  becoming  Osi- 
ris the  soul  had  the  power  of  assuming  any 
shape;  but  this  is  not  reincarnation  properly  so 
called,  the  expiatory  and  purifying  reincarna- 
tion of  the  Hindus.  All  that  we  have  been 
able  to  learn  in  this  connection  is  based  princi- 
pally on  a  passage  of  Herodotus,  which  ob- 
serves that  "the  Egyptians  were  the  first  to  af- 
firm that  the  soul  of  man  is  immortal.  Con- 
tinually, from  one  living  creature  about  to  die 
it  passes  into  another  in  the  act  of  birth,  and 
when  it  has  traversed  the  whole  terrestial, 
aquatic,  and  aerial  world,  it  returns  once  more 
to  introduce  itself  into  a  human  body.  This  cir- 
cular tour  lasts  for  three  thousand  years.  We 
have  here  a  theory  which  various  Greeks,  more 
or  less  of  our  period,  have  appropriated  to 
themselves.  I  know  their  names,  but  I  will  not 
place  them  on  record."  z 

In  the  same  way,  all  that  touches  on  the  fa- 

1  Sharpe,  "Egyptian  Inscriptions" ;  I,  Plate  4. 
2 Herodotus;  II,  123. 

114 


mous  mysteries  of  the  Egyptian  initiation  is  of 
comparatively  recent  origin,  dating  from  the 
time  when  Alexandria  was  seething  with  the 
traditions  and  theories  of  the  Hindus,  Chal- 
deans, Jews,  and  Neoplatonists.  The  Egypt 
of  the  Pharaohs  has  not  told  us  what  became 
of  the  soul  that  was  not  beatified.  It  is  possi- 
ble that  it  was  obliged  to  return  to  earth  in 
order  to  purify  itself,  and  that  the  secret  of  this 
reincarnation  was  reserved  for  the  initiates; 
just  as  it  also  is  possible  that  texts  more  accu- 
rately interpreted,  or  others  that  are  as  yet  un- 
known to  us,  will  justify  and  explain  the  eso- 
teric tradition.  For  the  rest,  it  would  not  be 
surprising,  as  Sedir,  one  of  the  most  learned  of 
occultists,  has  remarked,  if  some  part  of  the 
secrets  which  cannot  be  found  in  those  inscrip- 
tions which  we  imagine  are  completely  under- 
stood, were  to  come  to  us  by  way  of  Chaldea, 
since  it  was  among  the  Magi,  on  the  banks  of 
the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  that  Cambyses,  after 
the  conquest  of  Egypt,  exiled  all  the  priests  of 
the  latter  country,  without  exception  and  with- 
out return.  However  this  may  be,  I  repeat 
that  the  purely  Egyptian  texts  do  not,  for  the 
time  being,  enable  us  to  solve  the  problem. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PERSIA 

PERSIA  will  not  detain  us  long,  for  its  relig- 
ion is  undoubtedly  a  reflection  of  Vedism, 
or,  more  probably,  it  reveals  a  common  origin. 
Eugene  Burnouf  and  Spiegel  have  indeed  proved 
that  certain  parts  of  the  "Avesta"  are  as  old  as 
the  "Rig-Veda." 

Mazdeism  or  Zoroastrianism  would  thus  ap- 
pear to  be  an  adaptation  to  the  Iranian  mentality 
of  Vedism,  or  of  Aryan  traditions  (Atlantean, 
the  theosophists  would  say)  even  older  than 
Vedism.  During  the  Babylonian  captivity  it 
permeated  Chaldeism  and  exerted  a  profound 
influence  on  the  religion  of  the  Jewish  nation. 
We  owe  to  it,  among  other  things — as  they 
found  their  way  into  the  Judo-Christian  tradi- 
tion,— the  conception  of  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  the  judgment  of  the  soul,  the  last  judg- 
ment, the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  purgatory, 
the  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  good  works  as  a 
means  of  salvation,  the  revocability  of  penalties 
and  rewards,  and  all  our  angelology. 

Zoroastrianism  sought  to  solve,  more  exactly 
than  the  other  religions  of  antiquity,  the  prob- 
116 


Persia 

lem  of  evil,  by  making  evil  a  separate  god,  per- 
petually warring  against  the  good  god.  But 
this  dualism  is  more  apparent  than  real.  Ahura- 
Mazda  or  Ormazd  (Ormuz),  the  absolute 
and  universal  Being,  the  Word,  the  omnipotent 
and  omniscient  Spirit,  the  Reality,  precedes  and 
dominates  Agra-Mainyus  or  Ahriman,  who  is 
non-Reality — that  is  to  say,  he  is  all  that  is 
bad  and  deceptive,  being  in  his  darkness  ignor- 
ant of  everything;  seeming  as  greatly  inferior 
to  Ormazd  as  the  devil  is  to  the  God  of  the 
Christians;  appearing,  on  the  whole,  merely  as 
a  sort  of  mimic,  aping  divinity,  clumsily  imita- 
ting its  creations,  but  able  to  produce  only 
vices,  diseases  and  a  few  maleficent  creatures 
who  will  be  annihilated  in  the  tremendous  vic- 
tory of  good;  for  the  end  of  the  world,  in  the 
Zoroastrian  system,  is  but  the  regeneration  of 
creation.  However,  we  are  not  told  why  Or- 
mazd, the  supreme  god,  is  obliged  to  tolerate 
Ahriman,  who,  it  is  true,  does  not  personify  es- 
sential or  absolute  evil,  but  the  evil  necessary 
to  good,  the  darkness  indispensable  to  the  mani- 
festation of  light,  the  reaction  which  follows 
action,  the  negative  principle  or  pole  which  is 
opposed  to  the  positive,  in  order  to  assure  the 
life  and  equilibrium  of  the  universe. 

Moreover  Ormazd  himself,  it  seems,  obeys 
necessity,  or  a  natural  law  that  is  stronger  than 
he;  above  all  he  obeys  Time,  whose  decrees 
117 


The  Great  Secret 

are  Destiny,  "for  excepting  Time,"  says  the 
"Ulema,"  "all  things  are  created,  and  Time  is 
the  Creator.  Time  in  itself  displays  neither 
summit  nor  foundations;  it  has  been  always 
and  will  always  be.  An  intelligent  person  will 
not  ask,  Whence  comes  Time?  nor  if  there  was 
ever  a  time  when  this  power  was  not."  * 

It  would  be  interesting  to  examine  this  reli- 
gion from  the  point  of  view  of  its  contribu- 
tions to  Christianity,  which  borrowed  as  much 
from  it  as  from  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism; 
perhaps  even  more.  We  ought  also  to  consi- 
der, if  only  in  passing,  its  ethical  system,  which 
is  one  of  the  loftiest,  purest,  and  most  nobly 
human  that  we  know  of.  But  this  examination 
would  exceed  the  scope  of  our  inquiry.  We 
owe  to  ancient  Persia,  for  example,  the  won- 
derful conception  of  the  conscience,  a  sort  of 
divine  power,  existing  from  all  eternity,  inde- 
pendent of  the  material  body,  taking  no  part 
in  the  errors  which  it  sees  committed,  remain- 
ing pure  amid  the  worst  aberrations,  and  ac- 
companying the  soul  of  man  after  his  death. 
And  the  soul  of  the  upright  man,  when  crossing 
the  bridge  Tchinvat,  or  the  bridge  of  Retribu- 
tion, sees  advancing  to  meet  it  a  young  girl  of 
miraculous  beauty.  "Who  art  thou?"  demands 
the  astonished  soul;  "thou  who  seemest  to  me 
more  beautiful  and  more  magnificent  than  any 

1 J.  Darmesteter,  Ormazd  et  Ahriman;  p.  320. 

118 


Persia 

of  the  daughters  of  earth?"  And  his  con- 
science replies :  "I  am  thine  own  works.  I  am 
the  incarnation  of  thy  good  thoughts,  words, 
and  actions:  I  am  the  incarnation  of  thy  faith 
and  piety." 

On  the  other  hand,  if  it  be  a  sinner  who  is 
crossing  the  bridge  of  retribution,  his  con- 
science comes  to  meet  him  in  a  horrible  shape, 
although  in  herself  she  does  not  change,  but 
merely  shows  herself  to  man  as  he  deserves  to 
see  her.  This  allegory,  which  might  well  be 
drawn  from  a  collection  of  Christian  parables, 
is  perhaps  5000  to  6000  years  old,  and  is 
merely  a  dramatic  expression  of  the  Hindu 
Karma.  Here  again,  as  in  the  tradition  of 
Karma  and  that  of  the  Osirification  of  the  soul, 
it  is  the  soul  that  is  its  own  judge. 

We  owe  likewise  to  Mazdeism  the  subtle  and 
mysterious  conception  of  the  Fravashis  or  Fe- 
rohers  which  the  cabala  borrowed  from  Persia, 
and  which  Hebraic  mysticism  and  Christianity 
have  made  into  angels,  and  more  particularly 
guardian  angels.  This  conception  implies  the 
preexistence  of  the  soul.  The  Ferohers  are  the 
spiritual  form  of  being,  independent  of  ma- 
terial life  and  preceding  it.  Ormazd  offers  to 
the  Ferohers  of  men  the  choice  of  remaining  in 
the  spiritual  world  or  of  descending  to  earth 
to  be  embodied  in  human  flesh.  It  was  proba- 
ble from  prototypes  of  this  kind  that  Plato  de- 
119 


The  Great  Secret 

rived  his  theory  of  "ideas,"  supposing  that 
everything  has  a  double  life,  first  in  thought 
and  secondly  in  reality. 

Let  me  add  that  a  phenomenon  analogous  to 
that  which  we  have  already  found  at  work  in 
India  is  here  seen  to  repeat  itself:  what  was 
public  and  obvious  in  Mazdeism  gradually  be- 
came secret  and  was  reserved  solely  for  those 
initiated  into  what  the  Greeks  and  the  Jews 
(especially  in  their  cabala)  had  borrowed  from 
it. 


120 


CHAPTER  V 

CHALDEA 

/^HALDEA — that  is  to  say,  Babylonia  and 
\^4  Assyria — is,  like  Persia,  the  land  of  the 
Magi  and  is  commonly  regarded  as  the  classic 
home  of  occultism;  but  here  again,  as  we  saw  in 
the  case  of  Egypt,  the  legend  is  hardly  in  agree- 
ment with  the  historic  reality. 

It  seems  a  priori  that  Chaldea  should  pos- 
sess a  peculiar  interest  for  us;  not  because  it 
is  likely  to  teach  us  anything  that  we  have  not 
learned  from  India,  Egypt,  or  Persia,  to  which 
it  was  tributary,  but  because  it  was  probably 
the  principal  source  of  the  cabala,  which  was 
itself  the  great  fountainhead  from  which  the 
occultism  of  the  middle  ages,  as  it  has  come 
down  to  us,  was  fed. 

It  was  hoped  that  the  discovery  of  the  key 
to  the  cuneiform  inscriptions — a  discovery 
scarcely  more  than  fifty  years  old, — and  the 
deciphering  of  the  inscriptions  of  Nineveh  and 
Babylon,  would  result  in  valuable  revelations 
concerning  the  mysteries  of  the  Chaldean  reli- 
gion. But  these  inscriptions,  which  date  from 
2000,  3750,  and  in  one  instance  (preserved  in 
121 


The  Great  Secret 

the  British  Museum)  4000  years  before  Christ, 
and  whose  interpretation  moreover  is  far  more 
uncertain  and  controversial  than  that  of  the 
hieroglyphs  or  the  Sanskrit  texts,  have  yielded 
us  only  royal  biographies,  inventories  of  con- 
quests, incantatory  formulas,  litanies,  and 
psalms  which  served  as  models  for  the  Hebrew 
psalms.  From  these  we  perceive  that  the 
basis  of  the  very  primitive  religion  of  the  Su- 
mirs  or  Sumerians  and  the  Accads  or  Acca- 
dians  who  peopled  lower  Chaldea  before  the 
Semitic  conquest  was  one  of  magic  and  sorcery. 
This  was  followed  by  a  naturalistic  polytheism, 
which  the  conquering  Semites,  less  civilized 
than  those  whom  they  had  conquered,  adopted 
in  part,  until,  about  two  thousand  years  before 
our  era,  having  won  the  upper  hand,  they  grad- 
ually reduced  the  primitive  gods  to  the  rank 
of  mere  attributes  of  Baal,  the  supreme  divi- 
nity, the  sun-god. 

These  inscriptions,  then,  have  taught  us  noth- 
ing concerning  the  secret — if  there  is  a  secret 
— of  the  Chaldean  religion,  and  have  not  con- 
tributed anything  of  any  value  to  the  informa- 
tion already  in  our  possession,  thanks  to  cer- 
tain fragments  of  Berosus,  whose  accuracy  they 
have  more  than  once  enabled  us  to  verify. 

Berosus,  as  the  reader  may  remember,  was  a 
Chaldean  astromer,  a  priest  of  Belus  in  Baby- 
lon, who  about  the  year  280  B.  c. — shortly, 
122 


Chaldea 

that,  is,  after  the  death  of  Alexander — wrote 
in  Greek  a  history  of  his  country.  As  he  could 
read  cuneiform  characters  he  was  able  to  profit 
by  the  archives  of  the  temple  of  Babylon.  Un- 
fortunately the  work  of  Berosus  is  almost  en- 
tirely lost;  all  that  is  left  of  it  is  a  few  frag- 
ments collected  by  Josephus,  Eusebius,  Tatian, 
Pliny,  Vitruvius,  and  Seneca.  This  loss  is  all 
the  more  regrettable  in  that  Berosus,  who  seems 
to  have  been  a  serious  and  conscientious  his- 
torian, declared  that  he  had  had  access  to  doc- 
uments attributed  to  the  beings  who  preceded 
the  appearance  of  man  on  the  earth;  and  his 
history,  according  to  Eusebius,  covered  2,150,- 
ooo  years.  We  have  also  lost  his  cosmogony, 
and  with  it  all  the  astronomical  and  astrologi- 
cal science  of  Chaldea,  which  was  the  great 
secret  of  the  Babylonian  Magi,  whose  zodiac 
dates  back  6700  years.  We  have  only  the 
treatise  known  as  "Observations  of  Bel,"  trans- 
lated into  Greek  by  Berosus,  though  the 
text  that  has  come  down  to  us  is  of  much  later 
date. 

The  few  pages  that  are  all  that  is  left  us  of 
the  Chaldean  cosmology  contain  a  sort  of  anti- 
cipation of  the  Darwinian  theories  of  the  origin 
of  the  world  and  of  man.  The  first  god  and 
the  first  man  were  a  fish-god  and  a  fish-man 
— which  is,  by  the  way,  confirmed  by  embry- 
ology— born  of  the  vast  cosmic  ocean;  and  na- 
123 


The  Great  Secret 

ture,  when  she  attempted  to  create,  produced 
at  first  anomalous  monsters  unable  to  repro- 
duce themselves.  As  for  their  astrology,  ac- 
cording to  Professor  Sayce,  the  learned  profes- 
sor of  Assyriology  at  Oxford,  it  seems  to  be 
chiefly  based  on  the  axiom,  post  hoc  ergo  prop- 
ter  hoc;  which  is  to  say  that  when  two  events  oc- 
cur in  sequence  the  second  is  regarded  as  the  re- 
sult of  the  first;  hence  the  care  with  which  the 
astrologers  used  to  observe  celestial  pheno- 
mena in  order  that  they  might  empirically  fore- 
tell the  future. 

To  sum  up,  we  are  very  imperfectly  ac- 
quainted with  the  official  religion  of  Assyria 
and  Babylonia,  whose  gods  appear  to  be  rather 
barbaric.  This  religion  does  not  become  more 
enlightened  or  more  interesting  until  after  the 
conquest  of  Cyrus,  which  brought  into  the  coun- 
try the  Zoroastrian  and  Hindu  doctrines,  or 
confirmed  and  completed  those  that  had,  in  all 
probability,  already  found  their  way  into  the 
secrecy  of  the  temples;  for  Chaldea  had  al- 
ways been  the  great  crossroads  on  which  the 
theologies  of  India,  Egypt,  and  Persia  were 
of  necessity  wont  to  meet.  Thus  it  was  that 
these  doctrines  found  their  way  into  the  Bible 
and  the  cabala,  and  thence  into  Christianity. 

But  as  far  as  the  origin  of  religion  is  con- 
cerned, we  must  admit  that  the  authentic  docu- 
ments recently  discovered  teach  us  virtually 
124 


Chaldea 

nothing,  and  that  all  that  has  been  said  of  the 
esoterism  and  the  mysteries  of  Chaldea  is  based 
merely  upon  legends  or  writings  that  are  no- 
toriously apocryphal. 


135 


CHAPTER  VI 

GREECE  BEFORE  SOCRATES 


TO  complete  this  brief  survey  of  the  primi- 
tive religions — this  inquiry  into  the  ori- 
gins of  the  Great  Secret — we  must  not  over- 
look the  pre-Socratic  theogony. 

Before  the  classic  period  the  Greek  philoso- 
phers, of  whose  works  we  possess  only  muti- 
lated fragments — Pythagoras,  Petronius  Hip- 
pasus,  Xenophanes,  Anaximander,  Anaximenes, 
Heraclitus,  Alcmaeon,  Parmenides  of  Elea,  Leu- 
cippus,  Democritus,  Empedocles,  Anaxagoras, 
— were  already  in  the  ridiculous  and  uncomfor- 
table situation  in  which  the  Hebrew  cabalists 
and  the  occultists  of  the  middle  ages  found 
themselves  about  fifteen  to  twenty  centuries 
later.  They  seem,  like  the  latter,  to  have  had 
a  presentiment  of  the  existence,  or  the  dim  tra- 
dition, of  a  religion  more  ancient  and  of  a 
nobler  character  than  their  own,  which  had  re- 
plied, or  had  endeavored  to  reply,  to  all  the 
anxious  questions  as  to  divinity,  the  origin  and 
the  purpose  of  the  world,  eternal  Becoming 
and  impassive  Being;  the  passage  from  chaos 
to  the  cosmos;  the  emergence  from  the  vast 
126 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

sum  of  things  and  the  return  thereto;  spirit  and 
substance,  good  and  evil;  the  birth  of  the  uni- 
verse and  its  end;  attraction  and  repulsion; 
fate;  man's  place  in  the  universe  and  his  des- 
tiny. 

Above  all,  this  lost  tradition,  which  we  found 
in  India  all  but  intact,  marks  once  for  all  the 
divorce  between  the  knowable  and  the  unknow- 
able; and,  attributing  the  lion's  share  to  the 
latter,  it  had  the  courage  to  implant  in  the  very 
heart  of  its  doctrine  a  tremendous  confession 
of  ignorance. 

But  the  Greeks  do  not  seem  to  have  realized 
the  existence  of  this  confession,  simple,  definite, 
and  profound  though  it  was,  albeit  it  would 
have  saved  them  a  great  deal  of  vain  inquiry; 
or  else,  their  intellect — subtle,  more  active, 
more  enterprising  than  ours — was  unwilling  to 
admit  it;  and  all  their  cosmogony,  their  theog- 
ony,  and  their  metaphysics  are  merely  an  in- 
cessant endeavor  to  belittle  it,  by  subdividing 
it,  by  triturating  it  ad  infinitum,  as  though  they 
hoped  that,  by  dint  of  diminishing  each  separate 
particle  of  the  unknowable,  they  would  even- 
tually succeed  in  learning  all  about  it. 

What  a  curious  spectacle  it  is,  that  of  this 
contest  of  the  Greek  intellect — lucid,  exacting, 
fidgety,  eager  to  obtain  a  clear  idea  of  every- 
thing— with  the  imposing  though  often  extrav- 
agant obscurities  of  the  Asiatic  religions!  It 
127 


The  Great  Secret 

has  been  said  that  the  Greeks  had  no  concep- 
tion of  the  divine  Absolute;  and  this  is  true,  but 
of  a  later  period.  In  the  beginning  their  con- 
ceptions, as  yet  under  the  influence  of  myste- 
rious traditions,  were  completely  permeated  by 
this  sense  of  the  Absolute,  which  had  often  led 
them,  by  the  paths  of  reason  alone,  far  higher, 
and  perhaps  nearer  to  the  truth,  than  their 
more  capable  successors  who  had  lost  it. 


But  without  speaking  in  detail  of  their  grop- 
ings  after  a  light  of  which  they  had  some  vague 
intuition,  or  which  was  buried  deep  in  the  an- 
cestral memory  or  in  myths  which  were  no 
longer  understood;  without  specifying  the  con- 
tribution of  each  of  the  Greek  philosophers, 
which  would  involve  explanations  interesting 
enough  but  of  disproportionate  length,  we  shall 
merely  note  the  essential  points  of  agreement 
with  the  Vedic  and  Brahman  theories. 

Xenophanes  the  first,  unlike  the  poets,  af- 
firmed the  existence  of  a  sole,  immutable,  and 
eternal  god.  "God,"  he  said,  "is  not  born,  for 
He  could  not  be  born  save  of  His  like,  or  of 
His  contrary;  two  hypotheses  of  which  the  first 
is  futile,  and  the  second  absurd.  One  cannot 
call  Him  infinite,  nor  yet  finite;  for  if  infinite, 
having  neither  middle  nor  beginning  nor  end, 
He  would  be  nothing  at  all;  and  if  finite  He 
128 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

would  be  encompassed  by  limitations  and  would 
cease  to  be  One.  For  like  reasons  He  is  nei- 
ther at  rest  nor  in  movement.  In  short,  one 
cannot  attribute  to  Him  any  characteristics  but 
negative  ones."  *  This  is  really  tantamount  to 
admitting,  in  other  words,  that  He  is  as  un- 
knowable as  the  First  Cause  of  the  Hindus. 

This  acceptance  of  the  Unknowable  is  more 
clearly  formulated  by  Xenophanes  in  another 
passage: 

"No  one  understands,  no  one  ever  will  under- 
stand, the  truth  concerning  the  gods  and  the 
things  which  I  teach.  If  any  one  did  happen  to 
come  upon  the  absolute  truth  he  would  never  be 
aware  of  the  encounter.  Nowhere  do  we  find 
anything  more  than  probability." 

Might  we  not  repeat  to-day  what  the 
founder  of  the  Eleatic  school  affirmed  more 
than  twenty-five  centuries  ago?  Was  there, 
here,  as  elsewhere,  an  infiltration  of  the  primi- 
tive tradition?  It  is  probable;  in  any  case,  the 
filiation  is  clearly  proved  in  other  particulars. 
The  Orphics  whom  we  find  at  the  legendary 
and  prehistoric  source  of  Hellenic  poetry  and 
philosophy  were  really,  according  to  Herodo- 
tus, Egyptians.2  We  have  seen,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  Egyptian  religion  and  the  Vedic 
religion  have  probably  a  common  origin,  and 

1  Albert  Rivaud,  Le  Probleme  du  Devinir;  p.  io3, 
zperodotus;  II,  81. 

129 


The  Great  Secret 

that  it  is  for  the  moment  impossible  to  say 
which  is  the  more  ancient.  Now  the  Pythago- 
reans borrowed  from  the  Orphics  the  wander- 
ings of  the  soul  and  the  series  of  purifications. 
Others  have  taken  from  them  the  myth  of 
Dionysus,  with  all  its  consequences;  for  Diony- 
sus, the  child-god,  slain  by  the  Titans,  whose 
heart  Athene  saved  by  hiding  it  in  a  basket,  and 
who  was  brought  to  life  again  by  Jupiter,  is 
Osiris,  Krishna,  Buddha;  he  is  all  the  divine 
incarnations;  he  is  the  god  who  descends  into 
or  rather  manifests  himself,  in  man;  he  is 
Death,  temporary  and  illusory,  and  rebirth,  ac- 
tual and  immortal;  he  is  the  temporary  union 
with  the  divine  that  is  but  the  prelude  to  the 
final  union,  the  endless  cycle  of  the  eternal 
Becoming. 

3 

Heraclitus,  who  was  regarded  as  the  philoso- 
pher of  the  mysteries,  explains  the  nature  of 
this  cycle.  "On  the  periphery  of  the  circle 
the  beginning  and  the  end  are  one."  *  "Divin- 
ity is  itself,"  says  Auguste  Dies,  "the  origin 
and  the  end  of  the  individual  life.  Unity  is 
divided  into  plurality  and  plurality  is  resolved 
into  unity,  but  unity  and  plurality  are  contem- 
poraneous, and  the  emanation  from  the 
bosom  of  the  divine  is  accompanied  by  an 

1  Heraclitus,  102. 

130 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

incessant  return  to  divinity." 1  All  comes 
from  God,  all  returns  to  God;  all  becomes 
one,  one  becomes  all.  God,  or  the  world,  is 
one :  the  divine  idea  is  diffused  through  every 
quarter  of  the  universe.  In  a  word,  the  sys- 
tem of  Heraclitus,  like  that  of  the  "Vedas"  and 
the  Egyptians,  is  a  Unitarian  pantheism. 

In  Empedocles,  who  follows  Xenophanes  and 
Parmenides,  we  find,  in  the  province  of  cos- 
mology, the  Hindu  theory  of  the  expansion  and 
contraction  of  the  universe,  of  the  god  who 
breathes  it  in  and  breathes  it  out,  of  alternative 
externalization  and  internalization. 

"In  the  beginning  the  elements  are  inextri- 
cably mingled  in  the  absolute  immobility  of  the 
Spheres.  But  when  the  force  of  repulsion,  af- 
ter remaining  inactive  on  the  external  circum- 
ference, has  resumed  its  movement  toward  the 
center,  separation  begins.  It  would  proceed  to 
absolute  division  and  dispersal  of  the  individ- 
ual, were  it  not  that  an  opposing  force  reas- 
sembles the  scattered  elements  until  the  primi- 
tive unity  is  gradually  reconstructed."  2 

The  Greek  genius,  of  which  we  have  here  an 
interesting  example,  seeks  as  far  as  possible  to 
explain  the  inexplicable,  whereas  the  Hindu  gen- 
ius contents  itself  with  feeling  it  as  something 
majestic  and  awe-inspiring,  calls  the  force  of 

1  Auguste  Dies,  Le  Cycle  Mystique;  p.  62. 

2  Ibid.;  pp.  84-85. 

131 


The  Great  Secret 

repulsion  hatred;  the  force  of  attraction,  af- 
fection. These  forces  exist  from  all  eternity. 
"They  were,  they  will  be,  and  never,  to  my 
thinking,  will  unending  time  contrive  to  throw 
them  off.  Now  plurality  resolves,  by  the  aid 
of  love,  into  unity;  and  now  unity,  in  hatred 
and  strife,  divides  itself  into  plurality." 

But  whence  comes  this  duality  in  unity? 
Whence  arise  the  opposing  principles  of  attrac- 
tion and  repulsion,  of  hatred  and  love?  Em- 
pedocles  and  his  school  do  not  tell  us.  They 
merely  state  that  in  division,  repulsion,  or  ha- 
tred there  is  decadence,  but  in  attraction,  in  the 
return  to  unity  and  love,  there  is  ascent  or 
reascent;  and  thus  the  Hindus  referred  the  idea 
of  decadence  or  downfall  to  matter,  and  the 
idea  of  reascension  and  return  to  divinity,  to 
the  spirit.  The  confession  of  ignorance  is  the 
same,  and  so  is  the  means  of  emerging  from 
hatred  and  escaping  from  matter.  In  the  first 
place  there  is  purification  during  life,  a  puri- 
fication entirely  spiritual.  "Blessed  is  he," 
says  the  philosopher  Agrigentes,  "who  acquires 
a  treasury  of  divine  ideas;  but  woe  to  him  who 
has  but  a  hazy  conception  of  the  gods." 

Here  again  and  above  all  we  have  purifica- 
tion by  successive  reincarnations.  Empedocles 
goes  further  than  the  Vedic  religion,  which  con- 
firms itself — at  all  events  until  Manu's  time — to 
the  reincarnation  of  man  in  man.  He,  like  the 
132 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

Pythagoreans,  accepts  metempsychosis :  that  is, 
the  passing  of  the  soul  into  animals,  and  even 
into  plants,  whereby  it  is  led  by  a  series  of 
ascents,  back  to  the  divinity  from  which  it 
emerged,  and  into  which  it  enters  and  is  reab- 
sorbed,  as  into  the  Hindu  Nirvana. 

4 

It  is  perhaps  of  interest  in  this  respect  to 
note  that,  as  in  the  Vedic  and  Egyptian  doc- 
trine, there  is  no  question  of  external  rewards 
and  punishments.  In  the  pre-Socratic  metem- 
psychosis, as  in  Hindu  reincarnation  and  before 
the  tribunal  of  Osiris,  the  soul  judges  itself  and 
automatically,  so  to  speak,  awards  itself  the 
happiness  or  the  misery  which  is  its  right. 
There  is  no  enraged  and  vengeful  deity,  no 
special  place  of  damnation  set  aside  for  mis- 
creants, or  for  expiation.  We  do  not  expiate 
our  sins  after  death,  because  there  is  no  death. 
We  expiate  them  only  in  our  lifetime,  by  our 
lives:  or  rather  there  is  no  expiation;  only  the 
scales  fall  from  our  eyes.  The  soul  is  happy 
or  unhappy  because  it  does  or  does  not  feel 
that  it  is  in  its  proper  place;  because  it  can  or 
cannot  attain  the  height  which  it  hoped  to  con- 
quer. It  is  aware  of  its  divinity  only  in  so  far 
as  it  has  understood  or  understands  God. 
Stripped  of  all  that  was  material,  all  that  had 
blinded  it,  it  perceives  itself  suddenly  on  the 
133 


The  Great  Secret 

farther  shore,  just  as  it  was,  though  un- 
known to  itself,  on  the  hither  side.  Of  all  its 
possessions,  of  its  happiness  or  its  fame,  noth- 
ing is  left  but  its  intellectual  and  moral  ac- 
quisitions. For  in  itself  it  is  nothing  more 
than  the  thoughts  which  have  possessed  it  and 
the  virtues  which  it  has  practised.  It  sees  it- 
self as  it  is,  and  catches  a  glimpse  of  what  it 
might  have  been;  and  if  it  is  not  satisfied  it 
tells  itself,  "It  must  all  be  done  over  again"; 
and  of  its  own  free  will  it  returns  to  life,  aim- 
ing at  a  higher  mark  and  reemerging  happier 
and  of  greater  stature. 


5 

On  the  whole,  in  the  theology  and  the  myths 
of  the  pre-Socratic  period,  as  in  the  theologies 
and  the  myths  of  the  religions  which  preceded 
them,  there  is  no  hell  and  no  heaven.  In  the 
underground  caverns  of  hades,  as  in  the  mead- 
ows of  the  Elysian  fields,  there  are  only  the 
phantoms,  the  astral  manes,  the  Egyptian  dou- 
bles, the  inconsistent  relics  of  our  discarnate 
shades.  The  instruments  of  their  torment  or 
the  accessories  of  their  pale  felicity  are  but 
evidence  of  identity,  by  the  aid  of  which,  like 
the  vague  interlocutors  of  our  spiritualists, 
they  seek  to  make  themselves  known.  Here, 
just  as  in  India,  hell  is  not  a  place  but  a  state 
134 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

of  the  soul  after  death.  The  manes  are  not 
chastised  in  a  place  of  semi-darkness ;  they  sim- 
ply continue  to  live  there  by  the  reflection  of 
their  former  lives.  There  Tantalus  is  always 
thirsty;  there  Sisyphus  rolls  his  rock;  there  the 
Danaides  exhaust  themselves  in  seeking  to  fill 
their  bottomless  measure ;  there  Achilles  brand- 
ishes his  lance,  Ulysses  bears  his  oar,  and  Her- 
cules draws  his  bow;  their  vain  effigies  repeat 
to  infinity  the  memorable  or  habitual  actions  of 
their  lives  on  earth ;  but  the  imperishable  spirit, 
the  immortal  soul  is  not  there;  it  is  purifying 
itself  elsewhere,  in  another  body;  it  is  advanc- 
ing upon  the  long  invisible  path  which  leads  it 
back  to  God. 

At  this  stage,  as  in  all  remote  beginnings, 
there  is  as  yet  no  fear  of  death  and  the  be- 
yond. This  fear  does  not  manifest  itself  or  de- 
velop in  the  great  religions  until  the  latter  be- 
gin to  be  corrupted  for  the  benefit  of  priests 
and  kings.  The  intuition  and  intelligence  of 
mankind  have  never  again  reached  the  height 
which  they  attained  when  they  conceived  the 
ideal  of  divinity  of  which  we  find  the  most 
authentic  traces  in  the  Vedic  traditions.  One 
might  say  that  in  those  days  man  disclosed,  at 
the  topmost  height  of  his  stature,  and  there  es- 
tablished, once  for  all,  that  conception  of  the 
divine  which  he  subsequently  forgot  and  fre- 
quently degraded;  but  despite  oblivion  and 
135 


The  Great  Secret 

ephemeral  perversion,  its  light  was  never  lost. 
And  that  is  why  we  feel,  beneath  all  these 
myths,  behind  all  these  doctrines,  which  are 
sometimes  so  contradictory,  the  same  optimism, 
or  at  all  events  the  same  ignorant  confidence; 
for  the(most  ancient  secret  of  mankind  is  really 
a  blind,  stupendous  confidence  in  the  divinity 
from  which  it  emerged  without  ceasing  to 
form  part  of  it  and  to  which  it  will  one  day  re- 
turn.) 

There  are  still  many  points  of  contact  which 
might  well  be  singled  out;  for  example,  the 
atomic  theory,  which  contains  some  extraordi- 
nary instances  of  intuition.  Leucippus  and  De- 
mocritus  in  particular  taught  that  the  gyra- 
tory movement  of  the  spheres  exists  from  all 
eternity,  and  Anaxagoras  developed  the  theory 
of  elemental  vortices  which  the  science  of  our 
own  days  is  rediscovering.  But  what  we  have 
just  recorded  will  doubtless  appear  sufficient. 
For  the  rest,  in  this  philosophy,  which  is  only 
too  generally  regarded  as  a  tissue  of  absurdities 
and  puerile  speculations,  we  are  dealing  with 
most  of  the  great  mysteries  that  perplex  hu- 
manity. On  examining  it  more  closely  we  find 
in  it  some  of  the  most  wonderful  efforts  of  hu- 
man reason,  which,  secretly  sustained  by  the 
truth  contained  in  certain  cloudy  myths,  ap- 
proaches the  probable  and  the  plausible  more 
closely  than  most  of  our  modern  theories. 
136 


Greece  Before  Socrates 


We  may  suppose  that  the  most  important 
parts  of  this  theosophy  and  philosophy,  namely, 
those  which  treated  of  the  Supreme  Cause  and 
the  Unknowable,  were  gradually  neglected  and 
forgotten  by  the  classic  theosophy  and  philos- 
ophy, and  became,  as  in  Egypt  and  India,  the 
secret  of  the  hierophants,  forming,  together 
with  more  direct  oral  traditions,  the  founda- 
tions of  the  famous  Greek  mysteries,  and  no- 
tably of  the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  whose  veil 
has  never  been  pierced. 

Here  again  the  last  word  of  the  great  secret 
must  have  been  the  confession  of  an  invincible 
and  inviolable  ignorance.  At  all  events,  what- 
ever negative  and  unknowable  elements  may 
already  have  existed  in  the  myths  and  the  philos- 
ophy of  which  he  was  constantly  being  re- 
minded, they  were  enough  to  destroy,  for  the 
initiate,  the  gods  adored  by  the  vulgar,  while 
at  the  same  time  he  came  to  understand  why 
a  doctrine  so  perilous  for  those  who  were  not 
in  a  position  to  realize  its  exalted  nature  had 
to  remain  occult.  There  was  probably  no  more 
than  this  in  the  supreme  revelation,  because 
there  is  probably  no  other  secret  that  man 
might  conceive  or  possess;  that  there  never  can 
have  existed,  nor  ever  will  exist,  a  formula  that 
will  give  us  the  key  of  the  universe. 
137 


The  Great  Secret 

But  apart  from  this  confession,  which  must 
have  seemed  overwhelming,  or  of  the  nature  of 
a  release,  in  accordance  with  the  quality  of  the 
recipient's  mind,  it  is  probable  that  the  neo- 
phyte was  initiated  into  an  occult  science  of  a 
more  positive  nature,  such  as  that  possessed  by 
the  Egyptian  and  Hindu  priests.  Above  all,  he 
must  have  been  taught  the  methods  of  attain- 
ing to  union  with  the  divine,  or  to  immersion  in 
the  divine  by  means  of  ecstasy  or  trance.  It  is 
permissible  to  suppose  that  this  ecstasy  was  ob- 
tained by  the  aid  of  hypnotic  methods;  but  these 
methods  were  those  of  a  hypnotism  far  more 
expert  and  more  fully  developed  than  our  own, 
in  which  hypnotism  properly  so  called,  magne- 
tism, mediumship,  spiritualism,  and  all  the  mys- 
terious forces — odic  and  otherwise — of  the  sub- 
conscious self,  which  were  then  more  fully  un- 
derstood than  they  are  to-day,  were  commingled 
and  set  to  work. 

The  writer  whom  many  persons  regard  as 
the  greatest  theosophist  of  our  day — Rudolph 
Steiner — professes,  as  we  shall  see  later  on,  to 
have  rediscovered  the  means,  or  one  of  the 
means,  of  producing  this  ecstasy,  and  of  plac- 
ing one's  self  in  communication  with  higher 
spheres  of  existence,  and  with  God. 


138 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

7 

From  the  foregoing  we  may,  so  it  seems,  con- 
clude that  the  higher  initiates,  or,  to  speak  more 
precisely,  the  adepts  of  the  esoteric  religions, 
of  the  colleges  of  priests  or  the  occult  frater- 
nities, did  not  know  very  much  more  concern- 
ing the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  universe, 
the  unknowable  nature  of  the  First  Cause,  the 
father  of  the  gods,  and  the  duties  and  desti- 
nies of  mankind,  than  that  which  the  great  prim- 
itive religions  had  taught,  openly  and  to  those 
who  were  capable  of  understanding  it.  They 
did  not  know  more  for  the  reason  that  as  yet 
it  was  not  possible  to  know  more,  or  conse- 
quently to  teach  more.  If  they  had  known 
anything  further  we  too  should  know  it;  for  it 
is  hardly  conceivable  that  the  gist  of  such  a  se- 
cret should  not  have  transpired  if  so  many  thou- 
sands of  men  had  known  it  for  so  many  thou- 
sands of  years.  If  it  were  possible  to  imagine 
that  such  a  secret  existed  and  that  we  could 
understand  it,  in  understanding  it  we  should  no 
longer  be  men.  There  are  limits  to  knowledge 
which  the  brain  has  not  yet  passed,  and  which 
it  never  will  be  able  to  pass  without  ceasing  to 
be  human.  At  most  the  confessions  of  irredu- 
cible agnosticism  and  absolute  pantheism, 
which  are  the  two  poles  between  which  the 
loftiest  human  thought  has  always  hesitated,  is 
hesitating  now,  and  in  all  probability  will  al- 
139 


The  Great  Secret 

ways  hesitate,  might  have  been  more  definite, 
more  clearly  expressed,  less  wrapped  in  formal- 
ities, and  more  complete,  and  might  have  put 
those  who  received  it  on  their  guard  against 
the  fallacious  appearances  and  the  necessary 
lies  of  the  official  theogonies  and  mythologies. 


8 

Still,  at  a  certain  level  there  was  no  esoteric 
cosmogony,  theogony,  or  theology,  no  secret 
code  of  morality.  In  this  connection,  as  we 
have  just  seen,  the  primitive  religions  left  noth- 
ing unexplored;  not  so  much  as  a  shadowy 
corner  where  the  lovers  of  mystery,  the  inves- 
tigators of  the  unknown  might  take  refuge. 
Their  ethic  is  from  the  first — or  seems  to  be 
from  the  first,  for  we  know  nothing  of  the 
thousands  of  years  during  which  it  was  elabo- 
rated— the  loftiest  and  most  perfect  that  any 
man  could  hope  to  practise.  It  has  passed 
through  every  ordeal,  has  attempted  and 
climbed  every  mountain  in  its  way.  Where  it 
has  passed — and  it  has  passed  everywhere,  and 
above  all  over  the  most  rugged  pinnacles-^- 
nothing  is  left  to  be  gleaned.  We  are  still 
hundreds  of  centuries  beneath  its  attainments 
on  the  heights  of  abregation,  good-will,  pity, 
self-sacrifice,  and  absolute  self-devotion;  and 
most  of  all  in  the  search  for  what  Novalis 
140 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

called  "our  transcendental  me" — that  is  the 
divine  and  eternal  part  of  our  being. 

As  for  the  sanctions,  they  too  went  to  the 
extreme,  the  utmost  that  the  mind  can  conceive ; 
for,  emanating  from  the  Unknowable,  they 
could  not,  without  contradiction,  attribute  to 
this  Unknowable  any  sort  of  will  whatever. 
They  were  consequently  bound  to  place  within 
us  the  rewards  and  punishments  of  a  system  of 
morality  which  could  only  have  come  into  being 
within  us.  Here  again  there  was  not  the  least 
room  for  any  occult  doctrine. 

There  remains  the  riddle  of  the  origin  of 
evil,  the  apparent  antagonism  of  spirit  and  mat- 
ter, the  necessity  of  sacrifice,  pain,  and  expia- 
tion. Here  again,  under  pain  of  contradiction, 
the  occult  tradition  could  not  base  anything  on 
the  unknowable.  It  had  simply  to  admit,  pro- 
visionally, the  least  material  explanation  of  the 
esoteric  religions,  which  regard  matter  and 
darkness,  division  and  separation,  not  as  evil 
in  themselves,  but  as  transitory  states  of  the 
one  and  eternal  substance,  a  phase  of  the  un- 
ending flux  and  reflux  of  Becoming,  from  which 
one  should  strive  to  emerge  as  quickly  as  might 
be,  in  order  to  attain  the  spiritual  state  or 
phase.  In  this  connection  it  had  not,  and  of 
course,  could  not  have  had  a  more  satisfying 
doctrine.  In  any  case  no  echo  of  such  doctrine 
has  come  down  to  us,  and  it  is  probable  that  it 
141 


once  more-  contented  itself  with  emphasizing 
the  confusion  of  its  invincible  ignorance. 

9 

Here  then  are  the  points — and  they  are  the 
most  important — on  which  the  esoteric  doctrine, 
if  there  was  in  the  beginning  such  a  doctrine, 
must  necessarily  be  confounded  with  the  public 
teaching  of  the  primitive  religions  if  considered 
fairly  near  their  origin.  It  is  probable,  as  I 
have  already  said,  that  this  teaching  did  not 
assume  a  secret  character  until  very  much  later, 
when  the  official  religions  were  extraordinarily 
complicated  and  profoundly  corrupted.  Eso- 
terism  was  then  but  a  return  to  the  original 
purity,  just  as  in  Greece  the  pre-Socratic  doc- 
trines— which  were,  whatever  may  have  been 
said  of  them,  obviously  of  Asiatic  origin — be- 
came the  teachings  of  the  mysteries.  It  is 
therefore  all  but  certain  that  the  occultists  of  all 
times  and  nations  knew  as  little  of  them  as  we 
do.  But  there  are  other  spheres  in  which  they 
seem  to  have  had  traditions  which  the  official 
religions  do  not  appear  to  have  handed  down 
to  us,  and  whose  secret  the  successors  of  the 
great  adepts  of  India,  Egypt,  Persia,  Chaldea, 
and  Greece,  with  the  cabalists,  the  Neoplato- 
nists,  the  Gnostics,  and  the  Hermetics  of  the 
middle  ages,  have  more  or  less  unsuccessfully 
sought  to  recover. 


Greece  Before  Socrates 


10 

This  province  is  that  of  the  unknown  forces 
of  nature.  We  can  hardly  dispute  the  fact  that 
the  priests  of  India  and  Egypt,  and  the  Magi 
of  Persia  and  Chaldea,  had  a  knowledge  of 
chemistry,  physics,  astronomy,  and  medicine 
which  we  have  undoubtedly  surpassed  in  cer- 
tain respects,  but  in  others  we  are  perhaps  very 
far  from  having  caught  up  with  them.  With- 
out recalling  here  the  blocks  of  stone  weighing 
1500  tons,  transported  by  unknown  means  over 
enormous  distances,  or  the  rocking-stones, 
masses  of  rock  weighing  five  hundred  tons, 
which  were  never  native  to  the  soil  upon  which 
they  now  rest,  and  which  date  from  the  pre- 
historic era  of  the  Atlanteans,  it  is  an  un- 
doubted fact  that  the  great  pyramid  of  Cheops, 
for  example,  is  a  sort  of  stupendous  hiero- 
glyph, which,  by  its  dimensions,  its  proportions, 
its  internal  arrangements,  and  its  astronomical 
orientation,  propounds  a  whole  series  of 
riddles  of  which  only  the  most  obvious  have 
hitherto  been  deciphered.  An  occult  tradition 
had  always  affirmed  that  this  pyramid  con- 
tained essential  secrets,  but  only  quite  recently 
has  any  one  begun  to  discover  them.  Abbe 
Moreux,  the  learned  director  of  the  Bourges 
Observatory,  giving  a  complete  summary  of  the 
question  in  his  Enigmas  de  la  S-cience,1  shows  us 
143 


The  Great  Secret 

that  the  meridian  of  the  pyramid — the  line  run- 
ing  north  and  south  passing  through  its  apex — 
is  the  ideal  meridian;  that  is,  it  is  that  which 
crosses  the  greatest  amount  of  land  and  the 
smallest  amount  of  sea,  and  if  we  calculate  ex- 
actly -the  area  of  habitable  territories,  it  will 
be  found  to  divide  them  into  two  strictly  equal 
halves.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  multiply  the 
height  of  the  pyramid  by  one  million,  we  obtain 
the  distance  from  the  earth  to  the  sun,  or 
198,208,000  kilometers,  which  is,  within  about 
one  million  kilometers,  the  distance  which  mod- 
ern science  has  finally  adopted,  after  long  re- 
search and  dangerous  expeditions  to  distant 
lands,  and  thanks  to  the  progress  of  celestial 
photography. 

The  well-known  astronomer  Clark  has  calcu- 
lated, from  recent  measurements,  the  polar  ra- 
dius of  the  earth.  He  makes  it  6,356,521 
meters.  Now  this  is  precisely  the  cubit  of  the 
pyramid-builders,  or  0.6336321  meters,  multi- 
plied by  ten  millions.  Next,  on  dividing  the 
side  of  the  pyramid  by  the  cubit  used  in  its 
construction,  we  have  the  length  of  the  side- 
real year;  that  is,  the  time  which  the  sun  re- 
quires to  return  to  the  same  point  in  the  sky. 
Then,  if  we  multiply  the  pyramid-builders' 
inch  by  one  hundred  millions,  we  shall  obtain 
the  distance  which  the  earth  travels  in  its  orbit 

1  P.  5.  et  seq. 

144 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

in  one  day  of  twenty-four  hours,  the  approxi- 
mation being  closer  than  our  modern  measures 
— the  yard  or  the  meter — would  permit  of  our 
making.  Lastly,  the  entrance-passage  of  the 
pyramid  pointed  toward  the  pole  star  of  the 
period;  it  must  therefore  have  been  orientated 
with  reference  to  the  precession  of  the  equi- 
noxes, according  to  which  phenomenon  the 
celestial  pole  returns,  coinciding  with  the  same 
stars,  after  the  lapse  of  25,796  years. 

We  see,  then,  that,  as  Abbe  Moreaux  tells 
us,  "all  these  conquests  of  modern  science  are 
found  in  the  Great  Pyramid  in  the  form  of 
natural  dimensions,  measured,  and  always  capa- 
ble of  measurement,  needing  only  opportunity 
to  shine  forth  in  broad  daylight  with  the  met- 
rical meaning  contained  in  them. 

It  is  impossible  to  attribute  these  extraor- 
dinary data  to  mere  coincidence.  They  prove 
that  the  Egyptian  priests,  in  geography,  mathe- 
matics, geometry,  and  astronomy,  possessed 
knowledge  that  we  are  barely  beginning  to  re- 
conquer, and  there  is  nothing  to  tell  us  that 
this  enigmatic  pyramid  does  not  contain  a  host 
of  other  secrets  which  we  have  not  yet  dis- 
covered. But  the  strangest,  most  disconcert- 
ing fact  is  that  none  of  the  innumerable  hiero- 
glyphs that  have  been  deciphered,  nothing,  in- 
deed, to  be  found  in  the  whole  literature  of 
ancient  Egypt,  makes  any  allusion  to  this  ex- 
145 


The  Great  Secret 

traordinary  knowledge.  It  is  obvious  even 
that  the  priests  sought  to  conceal  it;  the  sacred 
or  pyramidal  cubit,  the  key  to  all  scientific  meas- 
urements and  calculations,  was  not  employed 
in  every-day  use;  and  all  this  miraculous  knowl- 
edge, coming  whence  no  one  knows,  was  deliber- 
ately and  systematically  buried  in  a  tomb  and 
propounded  as  a  riddle  or  a  challenge  to  the 
future  centuries.  Does  not  the  revelation  of 
such  a  mystery,  due  merely  to  chance,  permit 
us  to  suspect  that  many  other  mysteries  of  vari- 
ous sorts  are  awaiting  the  hazard  of  a  similar 
revelation,  in  the  same  pyramid  or  in  other 
monuments  or  in  the  sacred  writings? 

In  the  meantime  it  is,  after  all,  highly  prob- 
able that  the  Egyptian  priests  taught  the  Magi 
of  Chaldea  the  secret  of  what  Eliphas  Levi 
calls  ua  transcendental  pyrotechnics,"  and  that 
both  were  acquainted  with  electricity  and  had 
means  of  producing  and  directing  it  as  yet  un- 
known to  us.  Pliny,  in  fact,  tells  us  that 
Numa,  who  was  initiated  into  the  mysteries  of 
the  Magi,  understood  the  art  of  creating  and 
directing  the  lightning,  and  that  he  success- 
fully employed  his  terrible  battery  against  a 
monster  known  as  Volta,  which  was  devastat- 
ing the  Roman  Campagna.  Forestalling  the 
invention  of  the  telephone,  the  Egyptian  priests 
were  able,  we  are  told,  to  send  instantaneous 
messages  from  temple  to  temple,  no  matter 
146 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

what  the  distance.  For  that  matter,  the  Bible 
testifies  to  their  knowledge  and  power  when  it 
shows  them,  in  the  midst  of  the  ten  plagues, 
which  were  only  works  of  magic,  fighting  Moses 
by  means  of  miracles,  Moses  himself  being  one 
of  their  initiates. 


II 

But  it  is  more  especially  in  connection  with 
the  subconscious,  with  mysteries  of  the  Un- 
known Guest,  and  what  we  to-day  call  abnor- 
mal psychology;  with  the  astral  body,  hypno- 
tism, and  spiritualism;  with  the  properties  of 
the  ether,  and  of  unknown  fluids;  with  odylic 
medicine,  hyper-chemistry,  survival,  and  the 
knowledge  of  the  future,  that  they  must  have 
possessed  secrets  to  discover  which  the  Her- 
metics  of  the  middle  ages  wore  themselves  out 
amid  their  pentacles,  their  cryptograms,  and 
their  books  of  spells,  corrupted  and  incompre- 
hensible. It  is  apparently  in  these  regions  of 
occultism  that  there  is  something  left  for  us  to 
glean;  and  it  is  to  them  that  our  metaphysics  is 
turning  back,  though  by  other  roads. 

It  is  likewise  in  these  obscure  regions  that 
the  last  initiates  of  India,  the  heirs  to  the  eso- 
teric traditions,  excel  us  so  greatly  in  knowl- 
edge, producing  those  strange  phenomena 
which  cannot  always  be  sufficiently  explained 
H7 


The  Great  Secret 

by  trickery  and  conjuring,  and  which  astonish 
the  most  skeptical,  the  most  suspicious  of  trav- 
elers. 

Have  they  in  reserve,  as  they  claim,  yet  other 
secrets,  notably  those  that  enable  them  to 
manipulate  certain  terrible  and  irresistible 
forces,  such  as  the  intra-molecular  energy,  or 
the  formidable  and  inexhaustible  forces  of 
gravitation,  or  of  the  ether?  This  is  possible, 
but  less  certain.  It  is  rather  difficult  to  under- 
stand why,  in  cases  of  urgency,  when  there 
has  been  a  question  of  life  or  death,  they  have 
never  resorted  to  them.  India,  like  Egypt, 
Persia,  and  Chaldea,  has  suffered  terrible  in- 
vasions which  not  only  threatened  her  civiliza- 
tion, destroyed  her  wealth,  burned  her  sacred 
books,  and  massacred  her  inhabitants,  but  also 
attacked  her  gods,  violated  her  temples,  and 
exterminated  her  priests.  Yet  we  do  not  dis- 
cover that  she  ever  turned  a  supernatural 
weapon  against  her  aggressors.  It  may  be  ob- 
jected that  because  of  the  enormous  expanse 
of  the  territories  invaded  the  invasions  were 
never  complete;  that  the  last  initiates  might 
have  fled  before  them,  taking  refuge  in  inac- 
cessible mountains;  moreover  that  as  their  king- 
dom was  not  of  this  world  they  did  not  feel 
that  they  had  the  right  to  employ  their  super- 
terrestial  powers,  for  a  fundamental  axiom  of 
the  highest  knowledge  forbids  its  employment 
148 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

in  pursuit  of  material  profit;  and  this  too  is 
possible.  It  is  none  the  less  a  fact  that  the 
British  domination  of  Tibet,  and  above  all 
the  entry  into  that  country  of  Colonel  Young- 
husband's  expedition,  struck  a  very  palpable 
blow  at  the  prestige  of  their  occult  knowledge. 

12 

Until  1904,  in  fact,  the  occultists  had  re- 
garded Tibet  as  the  last  refuge  of  their  sci- 
ence. In  Tibet,  according  to  them,  there  were 
vast  underground  libraries,  containing  innumer- 
able books,  of  which  some  dated  back  to  the 
prehistoric  times  of  the  Atlanteans;  and  in  these 
the  supreme  and  immemorial  revelations  were 
recorded  in  tongues  known  only  to  a  few  adepts. 
In  the  heart  of  her  lamaseries,  swarming  with 
thousands  of  monks,  Tibet  maintained  a  college 
of  superior  initiates,  at  the  head  of  which  was 
the  initiate  of  initiates,  the  incarnation  of  God 
on  earth,  the  dalai-lama. 

No  European,  it  was  said,  had  ever  violated 
the  sacred  territory  of  Tibet;  which,  by  the 
way,  was  not  quite  correct,  for  in  1661,  in 
1715,  and  in  1719  two  or  three  Jesuits  and  a 
few  Capuchins  had  found  their  way  into  the 
country.  In  1760  a  Dutch  traveler  made  a 
stay  in  Lhasa,  and  in  1813  an  Englishman. 
Then,  in  1846,  the  missionaries  Hue  and  Gobet, 
disguised  as  lamas,  contrived  to  slip  into  the 
149 


The  Great  Secret 

country.  But  since  then,  despite  many  perilous 
attempts,  of  which  the  latest  and  best  known 
was  that  of  Sven  Hedin,  no  explorer  had  suc- 
ceeded in  reaching  the  holy  city.  One  may  say, 
therefore,  that  of  all  the  countries  in  the  world 
Tibet  was  the  most  mysterious,  the  most  illu- 
sive. 

On  the  announcement  of  the  sacrilegious  ex- 
pedition strange  happenings  were  anticipated  by 
the  world  of  occultists.  I  remember  the  con- 
fidence, the  serene  certainty  with  which  one 
of  the  sincerest  and  most  learned  of  them  told 
me,  early  in  the  year  1904:  "They  do  not 
know  what  they  are  attacking.  They  are 
about  to  provoke,  in  this  place  of  refuge,  the 
most  terrible  powers.  It  is  virtually  certain 
that  the  last  of  the  trans-Himalayan  adepts 
possess  the  secret  of  the  formidable  etheric 
or  sidereal  force,  the  mash-maket  of  the  At- 
lanteans,  the  irresistible  vril  of  which  Bulwer- 
Lytton  speaks:  that  vibratory  force  which,  ac- 
cording to  information  contained  in  the  'Astra- 
Vidya/  can  reduce  a  hundred  thousand  men  and 
elephants  to  ashes  as  easily  as  it  would  reduce 
a  dead  rat  to  powder.  Extraordinary  things 
are  about  to  happen.  They  will  never  reach 
the  inviolable  Potala !" 

And  what  happened?  Nothing  whatever; 
at  least,  nothing  of  what  was  anticipated. 
After  long  diplomatic  negotiations,  in  which 
150 


Greece  Before  Socrates 

the  incapacity,  unintelligence,  senility,  and  bad 
faith  of  the  Chinese,  and  the  childish  cunning 
of  the  college  of  lamas  were  revealed  in  a 
most  disconcerting  fashion,  Colonel  Young- 
husband's  force,  consisting  chiefly  of  Sikhs  and 
Gurkhas,  proceeded  to  enter  the  country.  In 
those  rugged  regions,  the  most  inhospitable  in 
the  world,  on  the  high  frozen  plateaus  of  the 
Himalayas,  desolate  and  uninhabitable,  they 
had  to  overcome  unheard-of  difficulties;  and 
in  passes  which  a  handful  of  men,  under  good 
leadership,  would  have  rendered  unassailable, 
they  were  met  more  than  once  by  the  unskil- 
ful though  courageous  resistance  of  the  dalai- 
lama's  soldiery,  filled  with  fanatical  valor  by 
the  mantras  and  spells  of  their  priests,  but 
armed  with  match-locks  and  inferior  native 
artillery.  At  length  the  British  force  drew 
near  to  Lhasa ;  and  for  five  days  the  distracted 
abbots  of  the  great  monasteries  solemnly 
cursed  the  invaders,  set  thousands  of  prayer- 
wheels  turning,  and  resorted  to  the  supreme 
incantations:  all  to  no  avail.  On  August  9 
Colonel  Younghusband  made  his  entry  into  the 
capital  of  Tibet,  and  occupied  the  holy  of 
holies,  the  house  of  God,  the  Potala;  an  im- 
mense and  fantastic  structure  which  soars  up- 
wards from  the  hovels  of  the  city,  resembling, 
with  its  terraces,  its  flat  roofs,  and  its  but- 
tresses, a  fortress,  a  piled-up  mass  of  Italian 
151 


The  Great  Secret 

villas,  a  barracks  with  innumerable  windows, 
and  certain  American  sky-scrapers.  The  dalai- 
lama,  the  thirteenth  incarnation  of  divinity, 
the  Buddhist  pope,  the  spiritual  father  of  six 
hundred  millions  of  souls,  had  shamefully  taken 
to  flight  and  made  good  his  escape.  The  con- 
vents and  sanctuaries,  swarming  with  monks 
— there  were  more  than  thirty  thousand  of 
them,  indifferent  and  resigned — were  explored; 
but  nothing  was  found  save  the  relics  of  the 
noblest  religion  ever  known  to  mankind,  finally 
rotting  and  dwindling  into  puerile  superstitions, 
mechanical  prayer-wheels,  and  the  most  de- 
plorable witchcraft.  And  thus  collapsed  the 
final  refuge  of  mystery;  thus  were  surrendered 
to  the  profane  the  ultimate  secrets  of  the 
earth. 


152 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  GNOSTICS  AND  THE  NEOPLATONISTS 


LEAVING  aside  Plato  and  his  school, 
whose  theories  are  so  well  known  that 
we  need  not  recall  them  here,  we  shall  now 
leave  the  comparatively  limpid  waters  of  the 
primitive  religions  to  enter  the  troubled  eddies 
which  succeed  them.  As  the  simple  and  awe- 
inspiring  conceptions  whose  very  altitude  hid 
them  from  view  were  lost  to  sight,  those  which 
followed  them,  and  were  but  their  shattered 
or  distorted  reflections,  became  more  turbid  and 
increased  in  number.  It  will  suffice  to  pass 
them  rapidly  in  review;  for  to  judge  by  what 
we  know,  or  rather  by  what  we  know  that  we 
cannot  know,  they  no  longer  have  very  much 
to  teach  us,  and  can  but  fruitlessly  confuse  and 
complicate  the  confession  of  the  less  knowable 
and  the  consequences  which  proceed  therefrom. 
Before  the  reading  of  the  hieroglyphs,  the 
discovery  of  the  sacred  books  of  India  and 
Persia,  and  the  labors  of  our  own  scientific 
metapsychologists,  the  only  sources  of  occult- 
ism were  the  cabala  and  the  writings  of  the 
Gnostics  and  Neoplatonists  of  Alexandria. 
153 


The  Great  Secret 

It  is  not  very  easy  to  locate  the  cabala 
chronologically.  The  "Sefer  Yezireh,"  as  we 
know  it,  which  is  as  it  were  the  entrance  to  the 
cabala,  seems  to  have  been  written  about  829 
A.  D.,  and  the  "Zohar,"  which  is  the  temple, 
about  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century.  But 
many  of  the  doctrines  which  it  teaches  go  back 
very  much  further:  namely,  to  the  Babylonian 
captivity,  and  even  to  the  bondage  of  the 
Israelites  in  Egypt.  From  this  point  of  view, 
then,  we  must  place  it  before  the  Gnostics  and 
the  Neoplatonists;  but  on  the  other  hand  it 
has  borrowed  so  much  from  the  latter  and 
they  have  influenced  it  so  greatly  that  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  speak  of  it  until  we  have 
said  something  of  those  to  which  it  owes  the 
best  and  the  worst  of  its  theories. 


It  is  true  that  these  Jewish  traditions,  for 
their  part,  mingled  their  abundant  streams 
with  those  of  the  other  Oriental  religions 
which  from  the  first  century  to  the  sixth  in- 
vaded the  Greek  and  Roman  theosophy  and 
philosophy,  causing  men  to  call  in  question  and 
to  examine  more  closely  the  beliefs  and  theo- 
ries by  which  they  had  lived.  There  was  in 
the  intellectual  world,  and  above  all  in  Alex- 
andria, whither  flowed  all  races  and  all  doc- 
trines, a  strange  force  of  curiosity,  restlessness, 
154 


The  Gnostics  and  the  Neoplatonists 

and  activity.  For  the  first  time — at  all  events, 
so  it  is  believed — the  Hellenic  philosophy 
found  itself  directly  in  contact  with  the  Orien- 
tal religions  and  philosophies — audacious, 
grandiose,  unfathomable — which  until  then  it 
had  known  only  by  hearsay  or  by  niggardly 
fragments.  The  Gnostics  contributed,  among 
other  doctrines,  those  of  Zoroaster,  while  the 
mysterious  Essenes,  theosophists  and  the- 
urgists,  who  came  from  the  shores  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  and  rather  mysteriously  disappeared  (al- 
though in  the  days  of  Philo  they  were  forty 
thousand  strong)  or  were  eventually  absorbed 
by  the  Gnostics,  doubtless  represented  the  Hin- 
du element  more  directly;  the  cabalists,  who 
existed  before  the  cabala  was  committed  to 
writing,  infused  fresh  life  into  the  doctrines 
of  Persia,  Chaldea,  and  Egypt;  the  Christians 
woke  up  to  find  themselves  between  the  Bible 
and  the  legends  of  India;  and  the  Neoplato- 
nists, who  might  more  correctly  be  called  the 
Neo-Orphics  or  Neo-Pythagoreans,  returned 
to  the  old  philosophers  of  the  sixth  century 
before  our  era,  striving  to  find  in  them  truths 
too  long  ignored,  which  were  suddenly  restored 
to  daylight  by  the  revelations  from  the  East. 
We  need  not  here  investigate  this  efferves- 
cence, which  constitutes  one  of  the  most  intense, 
and,  in  some  respects,  most  fruitful  crises  ever 
recorded  in  the  history  of  human  thought.  For 
155 


The  Great  Secret 

our  present  purposes  it  is  enough  to  note  that 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  idea  of  God,  of 
the  First  Cause,  of  the  pre-cosmic  Spirit,  or  the 
absolute  Reality,  which  precedes  all  being, 
manifest  or  conditioned,  as  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  origin,  purpose,  and  economy  of 
the  universe  and  the  nature  of  good  and  evil, 
it  teaches  us  nothing  that  we  have  not  found 
in  previous  religions  and  philosophies.  The 
manifestations  of  the  Unknowable,  the  divi- 
sion of  the  primordial  Unity,  and  the  descent 
of  spirit  into  substance  are  attributed  to  the 
Logos;  they  change  their  name  without  lessen- 
ing the  surrounding  darkness.  In  the  attempt 
to  find  an  explanation  of  the  insoluble  contra- 
dictions involved  by  an  impassive  god  and  a 
universe  in  incessant  movement,  an  unknowable 
god  who  is  finally  known  in  every  detail,  a  good 
god  who  creates,  desires,  or  permits  evil,  men 
imagined,  first,  a  threefold  hypostasis,  and 
then  a  host  of  intermediate  divinities,  demi- 
urges, or  reduplications  of  God,  eons,  or  divine 
faculties  and  attributes  personified,  angels,  and 
demons.  In  the  backwaters  of  these  special- 
izations, distinctions,  and  subdivisions,  subtle, 
ingenious,  and  inextricable,  the  simple  though 
tremendous  confession  of  the  Unknowable  was 
soon  submerged  by  such  a  tide  of  words  that 
it  was  no  longer  visible.1  Before  long  it  was 

1The  Gnostics  taught  that  the  Supreme  Being,  or  Perfect 
I56 


The  Gnostics  and  the  Neoplatonists 

completely  forgotten,  was  no  longer  referred 
to;  and  the  Supreme  Unknown  engendered  so 
many  and  so  familiar  secondary  divinities  that 
it  no  longer  dared  to  remind  men  that  they 
could  never  know  it.  Of  course  the  greater 
the  number  of  phrases  and  explanations,  the 
more  completely  were  the  primitive  verities,  on 
which  all  was  founded,  effaced  and  obscured; 
so  that  after  men  had  attained,  or  regained, 
in  Philo,  and  above  all  in  Plotinus,  the  loftiest 
summits  of  thought,  they  descended,  on  the 
one  hand,  to  the  lucubrations  of  that  Chinese 
puzzle,  the  famous  "Pistis-Sophia,"  attributed 
to  Valentinian,  and  on  the  other  to  the  pre- 
tended revelations  of  lamblichus  concerning 
the  Egyptian  mysteries — revelations  which  re- 
vealed nothing  whatever — and  the  whole  Gnos- 
tic and  Neoplatonic  movement  ended,  with  the 
successors  of  Valentinian  and  those  who  con- 
tinued the  work  of  Porphyry  and  Proclus,  by 
sinking  into  the  most  puerile  logomachy  and 
the  most  vulgar  witchcraft. 

We  need  not,  therefore,  consider  the  move- 
ment any  further:  not  that  the  study  of  this 
effervescence  would  be  devoid  of  interest;  on 
the  contrary,  there  are  few  moments  of  history 

Eon,  or,  as  we  should  say,  the  Eternal,  could  be  approached 
only  by  a  number  of  emanations  or  eons.  In  other  words, 
these  were  regarded  as  eternal  Beings  who  acted  as  inter- 
mediaries between  the  Perfect  Eon  and  mankind,  and,  being 
joined  together  formed  the  Perfect  Eon. — TRANS. 

157 


The  Great  Secret 

at  which  the  mind  has  been  forced  to  encounter 
problems  of  so  novel,  complex,  and  difficult  a 
nature,  or  at  which  it  has  given  proof  of 
greater  power,  vitality,  and  enthusiasm.  But 
what  I  have  already  said  of  this  period  is 
enough  for  my  purpose,  which  is  merely  to 
show  that  the  occultists  of  Greece,  and,  above 
all,  those  of  the  middle  ages,  who  interest  us 
more  especially  because  they  are  closer  to  us, 
so  that  our  memory  of  them  is  more  vivid,  have 
nothing  essential  to  teach  us  that  we  have  not 
already  learned  from  India,  Egypt,  and  Persia. 


158 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  CABALA    / 


WE  come  at  length  to  the  cabala,  which 
is  in  some  sort  the  vital  center  of  oc- 
cultism as  it  is  commonly  understood. 

This  word,  cabala,  which  covers  doctrines 
that  are  in  general  or  very  imperfectly  under- 
stood, is  for  some  enveloped  in  mystery  and 
illusion  of  a  perturbing  nature,  at  which  they 
all  but  shudder  as  though  they  saw  therein  a 
reflection  of  infernal  fires;  while  for  others  it 
evokes  merely  an  unreadable  jumble  of  ab- 
surd superstitions,  of  so  much  sheer  nonsense, 
of  fantastic  formula:  that  lay  claim  to  satanic 
powers;  childish  riddles  and  obsolete  lucubra- 
tions which  are  no  longer  worthy  of  serious  ex- 
amination. As  a  matter  of  fact  the  cabala 
merits  neither  this  excess  of  honor  nor  this 
indignity.  To  begin  with,  there  are  two  ca- 
balas: the  cabala  properly  so  called,  the  theo- 
retical cabala,  the  only  one  with  which  we  need 
concern  ourselves;  and  the  practical  cabala, 
which  is  merely  a  sort  of  senile  dermatosis, 
that  gradually  invades  the  less  noble  parts  of 
159 


The  Great  Secret 

the  first,  degenerating  into  imbecile  practices 
of  black  magic  and  sordid  witchcraft,  in  which 
it  is  impossible  to  take  any  interest. 

The  philosophical,  critical,  and  scientific  study 
of  the  cabala,  like  that  of  Vedism,  of  the  hiero- 
glyphs, or  of  Mazdeism,  is  a  thing  only  of 
yesterday.  Before  Franck  published  his  works 
on  the  subject,  the  cabala  was  known  only  by 
Knorr  von  Rosenroth's  volume,  the  Kabbala 
Denudata,  published  in  1677,  which,  in  sur- 
veying the  "Zohar,"  examines  only  the  "Book 
of  Mysteries"  and  the  "Great  Assembly" ;  that 
is,  its  obscurest  portions,  neglecting  the  text, 
and  giving  only  imperfectly  understood  extracts 
from  the  commentators.  Franck,  in  his  Kab- 
bala ou  la  Philosophic  Religieuse  des  Hebreux, 
which  appeared  in  1842,  reproduced  the  com- 
plete and  authentic  texts  for  the  first  time, 
translating  them  and  commenting  upon  them. 
Joel  and  Jellinck  continued  his  researches,  dis- 
cussed his  conclusions  and  corrected  his  mis- 
takes, and  the  latest  interpreter  of  these  mys- 
terious books,  S.  Karppe,  in  his  £tude  sur  les 
Origines  et  la  Nature  du  Zohar,  returning  to 
the  problem  already  propounded,  and  going 
back  to  the  sources  of  Jewish  mysticism,  gave 
us  in  1901  a  survey  which  enables  us  to  ad- 
venture without  fear  on  this  perilous  and  sus- 
pect soil. 

The  cabala,  from  the  Hebrew  kaballaht 
1 60 


The  Cabala 

which,  as  all  the  dictionaries  will  tell  you, 
signifies  tradition,  claims  to  be  a  body  of  oc- 
cult doctrine,  coincident  with  or  rather  com- 
plementary to  the  teaching  of  the  Bible,  or 
the  orthodox  doctrines  of  the  Torah,  that  is 
to  say,  of  the  Pentateuch,  transmitted  orally 
from  the  time  of  Moses,  who  is  supposed  to 
have  received  them  directly  from  God,  until 
a  period  which  extends  from  the  ninth  to  the 
thirteenth  or  fourteenth  century  of  our  era, 
when  these  secrets,  whispered  from  mouth  to 
ear,  as  the  initiates  used  to  say,  were  finally  set 
down  in  writing.  It  is  impossible  to  know  how 
far  this  claim  is  justified,  for  beyond  the  first 
or  second  century  before  Christ  the  historical 
traces  which  might  connect  the  tradition  that  we 
know  with  an  earlier  tradition  are  absolutely 
lacking.  We  must  therefore  confine  ourselves 
to  taking  the  two  volumes  of  the  cabala — the 
"Sefer  Yerizah"  and  the  "Zohar" — as  we  find 
them,  and  consider  what  they  contained  at  the 
time  when  they  were  written. 

The  "Sefer  Yerizah,"  or  "Book  of  Crea- 
tion," which  was  at  first  attributed,  childishly 
enough,  to  the  Patriarch  Abraham,  and  then, 
without  certainty,  to  the  Rabbi  Akiba,  is  briefly 
the  work  of  an  unknown  author  who  com- 
piled it  in  the  eighth  or  ninth  century  of  our 
era. 

To  give  some  idea  of  this  work,  it  will 
161 


The  Great  Secret 

suffice  to  transcribe  a  few  paragraphs  of  the 
first  chapter: 

"By  thirty-two  voices  of  marvelous  wisdom 
Yah,  Yehovah  Zebaoth,  the  living  God,  God 
the  All-Highest,  abiding  forever,  whose  name  is 
holy  (He  is  sublime  and  holy),  set  forth  and 
created  His  world  in  three  books;  the  Book 
properly  so  called,  the  Number,  and  the 
Word. 

"Ten  Sephiroth  unassisted,  twenty-two 
letters  of  which  three  are  fundamental  letters, 
seven  double  letters  and  twelve  simple  letters. 

"Ten  Sephiroth  unassisted,  conforming  with 
the  number  of  ten  fingers,  five  facing  five.  And 
the  alliance  of  the  One  is  exactly  adapted  to 
the  middle  by  the  circumcision  of  the  tongue 
and  the  circumcision  of  the  flesh. 

"Ten  Sephiroth  unassisted,  ten  and  not  nine, 
ten  and  not  eleven.  Understand  with  wis- 
dom and  meditate  with  intelligence;  examine 
them,  look  into  them  deeply.  Refer  the 
thing  to  its  light  and  set  its  author  in  his 
place. 

"Ten  Sephiroth  unassisted;  their  measure  is 
the  ten  without  end:  profundity  of  beginning 
and  profundity  of  end;  profundity  of  good 
and  profundity  of  evil;  profundity  of  height 
and  profundity  of  depth;  profundity  of  east  and 
profundity  of  west;  profundity  of  north  and 
profundity  of  south;  one  sole  master,  God, 
162 


The  Cabala 

faithful  King,  reigns  over  all  from  the  height 
of  his  holy  and  eternal  dwelling. 

"Ten  Sephiroth  unassisted;  their  aspect  is 
like  the  lightning,  but  their  end  has  no  end. 
His  command  to  them  is  that  they  shall  hasten 
and  come,  and  according  to  His  word  they  hurl 
themselves  forward  like  the  tempest,  and  pros- 
trate themselves  before  His  throne. 

"Ten  Sephiroth  unassisted;  their  end  fixed 
to  their  beginning  and  their  beginning  to  their 
end,  like  a  flame  attached  to  the  coal.  The 
Master  is  unique  and  has  no  helpers.  Now 
what  art  thou  before  the  One?" 

And  so  it  goes  on  interminably,  plunging 
into  a  sort  of  incomprehensible  superstition  of 
letters  and  numbers  considered  as  abstract 
powers.  It  is  certain  that  one  can  make  such 
texts  say  anything  one  pleases,  and  that  one 
gets  out  of  them  anything  one  wants.  We  find 
here  for  the  first  time  the  conception  of  the 
Sephiroth,  which  the  "Zohar"  will  unfold  more 
completely;  and  we  discover  in  it  a  system  of 
creation  in  which  "the  Word,  that  is,  the  Word 
of  God,  by  expressing  the  letters  Alef,  Mem, 
Schin"  as  is  explained  by  S.  Karppe,  one  of 
the  most  learned  commentators  of  this  enig- 
matic book,  "gives  birth  to  the  three  elements, 
and  producing  with  these  letters  six  combina- 
tions, it  gives  birth  to  six  directions;  that  is, 
it  gives  the  elements  the  power  to  extend  them- 
163 


The  Great  Secret 

selves  in  all  directions.  Then,  instilling  into 
these  elements  the  twenty-two  letters  of  the 
alphabet,  including  the  three  letters  Alef,  Mem, 
and  Schin  (no  longer  as  substantial  elements, 
but  as  letters),  and  expressing  the  whole  variety 
of  words  which  result  from  these  letters,  it 
produces  the  entire  multiplicity  of  things."  x 

All  this,  as  we  see,  reveals  nothing  of  great 
importance;  and  I  should  not  have  lingered 
over  these  solemn  tomfooleries  were  it  not  that 
the  "Sefer  Yerizah"  enjoys  a  reputation  among 
occultists  which  hardly  seems  deserved  when 
one  looks  into  the  matter,  and  serves  as  a 
point  of  departure  and  a  basis  for  the  "Zohar," 
which  constantly  refers  to  it. 

The  occultists  have  endeavored  to  give  us 
the  keys  of  the  "Sefer,"  but  I  humbly  confess 
that  for  me  these  keys  have  opened  nothing. 
After  all,  it  is  probable  enough,  as  Karppe  says, 
that  this  mysterious  volume  is  merely  the  work 
of  a  pedagogue  bent  upon  concentrating,  in  a 
very  brief  handbook,  all  the  elementary  sci- 
entific knowledge  relating  to  reading  and  gram- 
mar, cosmology  and  physics,  the  division  of 
time  and  space,  anatomy,  and  Jewish  doctrine; 
and  that  instead  of  being  the  work  of  a  mys- 
tic it  is  rather  a  sort  of  encyclopedia,  a  mnemo- 
technical  enchiridion. 

1  S.  Karppe,  Etudes  sur  let  Origines  et  la  Nature  du  Zo- 
har; pp.  159  and  163. 

164 


The  Cabala 


The  "Zohar"— which  means  "the  light,"— 
like  the  "Sefer  Yerizeh,"  is  the  fruit  of  pro- 
tracted mystical  fermentation  which  goes  back 
to  a  period  when  the  "Talmud"  was  not  yet 
completed;  that  is,  before  the  sixth  century 
of  our  era,  and  above  all  during  the  period 
known  as  Gaonic.  After  a  somewhat  lengthy 
eclipse,  this  mysticism  revived  about  the  year 
820  A.  D.,  and  continued  to  manifest  itself  in 
the  writings  of  the  great  Jewish  theologians; 
Ibn  Gabirol,  Juda  ha  Levy,  Abn-Ezra,  and, 
principally,  in  those  of  Maimonides.  Then 
directly  preparing  for  the  cabala,  comes  the 
school  of  Isaac  the  Blind,  which  is  above  all 
metaphysical — "an  abstraction  of  the  Neo- 
platonic  abstractions,"  as  some  one  has  de- 
scribed it,  in  which  Nachmanides  shone  with 
particular  brilliance;  then  the  school  of  Elea- 
zar  of  Worms,  which  gave  special  attention  to 
the  mysteries  of  letters  and  numbers;  and  the 
school  of  Abulafia,  which  devoted  itself  to  pure 
contemplation. 

This  brings  us  to  the  "Zohar,"  properly  so 
called.  Like  the  Bible,  like  the  "Vedas,"  the 
"Avesta,"  and  the  Egyptian  "Book  of  the 
Dead,"  this  is  not  a  homogeneous  production 
but  the  result  of  a  slow  process  of  incubation, 
the  work  of  numbers  of  anonymous  collabora- 
165 


The  Great  Secret 

tors,  incoherent,  disconnected,  often  contradic- 
tory, in  which  one  finds  a  little  of  everything, 
of  the  best  as  well  as  the  worst,  the  loftiest 
speculations  being  followed  by  the  most  child- 
ish and  extravagant  irrelevances.  It  is  a  col- 
lection, a  storehouse,  or  rather  a  bazaar, 
heaped  pell-mell  with  everything  that  could  not 
find  place  in  the  official  religion,  as  being  too 
audacious,  too  exalted,  too  fantastic,  or  too 
alien  to  the  Jewish  spirit. 

It  is  not  easy  to  determine  the  date  of  a 
work  of  this  kind.  Franck,  to  emphasize  its 
antiquity,  refers  to  its  Chaldean  form.  But  a 
great  many  rabbis  of  the  middle  ages  wrote 
Chaldean  Aramaic.  It  was  then  maintained 
that  it  was  the  work  of  a  Tanaite,  Simon  ben 
Jochai  (about  150  A.  D.),  but  nothing  confirm- 
ing his  authorship  has  come  to  light.  We  find 
no  certain  trace  of  its  existence  before  the  end 
of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  most  probable 
theory — and  the  learned  Karppe  reached  this 
conclusion  after  a  long  and  minute  discussion 
of  all  possible  hypotheses — is  that  Moses  de 
Leon,  who  lived  at  the  beginning  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  most  assuredly  took  a  part  in 
the  compilation  of  the  "Zohar";  and,  if  he  was 
not  its  principal  author,  gathered  into  a  single 
whole  a  number  of  mystical  fragments,  com- 
mentaries on  the  Scriptures — resulting,  like  so 
many  other  works  of  Jewish  literature,  from 
166 


The  Cabala 

the  collaboration  of  a  number  of  writers.  In 
any  case,  it  is  certain  that  the  "Zohar"  as  we 
know  it  is  comparatively  modern. 


For  the  Jehovah  of  the  Bible,  the  only  God, 
personal,  anthropomorphic,  the  direct  Creator 
of  the  universe,  the  "Zohar"  substitutes  the  En- 
sof :  that  is,  the  Infinite;  or  perhaps  we  should 
rather  say  that  it  is  superposed  upon  Jehovah, 
or  is  presupposed;  and  the  En-sof  is  also  the 
Ayin,  that  is,  the  non-existent,  the  Ancient  of 
Ancients,  the  Mystery  of  Mysteries,  the  Long 
Face.  The  En-sof  is  God  in  Himself,  as  un- 
knowable, as  inconceivable,  as  the  Cause  with- 
out cause  or  the  Supreme  Spirit  of  the  "Vedas," 
of  which  He  is  only  a  replica,  modified  by  the 
Jewish  genius.  He  is  even  nearer  the  non- 
existent than  the  Supreme  Spirit  of  the  Hindus, 
for  His  first  manifestation,  the  first  Sephira,  the 
"Crown,"  is  still  non-existence;  it  is  the  Ayin  of 
the  Ayin,  the  non-existence  of  non-existence. 
He  is  not  even  called  "That,"  as  in  India. 
"When  all  was  still  contained  in  Him,"  says 
the  "Zohar,"  "God  was  the  Mystery  of  Mys- 
teries. He  was  then  without  name.  The  only 
fitting  term  for  Him  would  have  been  the  in- 
terrogation: Who?"  1 

Of  this  Deity  we  can  give  but  negative  and 

i "Zohar";  II,  105. 

167 


The  Great  Secret 

contradictory  descriptions.  "He  is  separate, 
since  He  is  superior  to  all;  and  He  is  not  sep- 
arate. He  has  a  shape,  and  is  shapeless.  He 
has  a  shape  in  so  far  as  He  establishes  the 
universe,  and  He  has  no  shape  in  so  far  as  He 
is  not  contained  in  it."  * 

Before  the  unfolding  of  the  universe  He  was 
not,  or  was  but  a  question-mark  in  the  void. 
So  here  we  find  at  the  outset  the  confession  of 
absolute  ignorance,  invincible,  irreducible. 
The  En-sof  is  but  an  unlimited  enlargement  of 
the  Unknowable;  the  God  of  the  Bible  is  ab- 
sorbed and  disappears  in  a  vast  abstraction; 
hence  the  necessity  of  secrecy. 

But  it  was  necessary  to  make  this  inconceiv- 
able negation — impenetrable,  immobile,  and 
eternal,  like  the  Supreme  Cause  of  the  Indian 
religions — emerge  from  its  non-existence  and 
its  immobility  and  pass  from  the  infinite  to  the 
finite,  from  the  invisible  to  the  visible;  and  it 
is  here  that  the  difficulties  begin.  God  being 
infinite  (that  is,  filling  all  things,  how,  beside 
the  En-sof,  the  Infinite,  is  there  room  for  the 
Sof,  the  finite?  The  "Zohar"  is  evidently  em- 
barrassed, and  its  explanations  lead  it  far  from 
the  humble  and  awe-inspiring  simplicity  of 
Hindu  theosophy.  It  is  loath  to  admit  its  igno- 
rance ;  it  wants  to  account  for  everything,  and, 
groping  in  the  Unknowable,  it  entangles  itself 

i  "Zohar";  III,  288-a. 

1 68 


The  Cabala 

in  explanations  which  are  often  irreconcilable, 
and  when  the  ground  falls  away  beneath  its 
feet  it  has  recourse  to  allegories  and  meta- 
phors, to  mask  the  impotence  of  its  conceptions 
or  to  provide  an  apparent  escape  from  the 
dilemma  in  which  it  has  placed  itself.  For  a 
moment  it  asks  itself  whether  it  can  admit  of 
creation  ex  nihilo,  extending  to  this  first  act  the 
incomprehensible  character  of  the  divinity; 
then  it  seems  to  think  better  of  it  and  rallies 
to  the  doctrine  of  emanation,  which  it  finds  in 
India,  in  Zoroastrianism,  and  in  the  Neoplato- 
nists.  It  modifies  their  doctrine,  adapting  it  to 
the  Jewish  genius,  and  complicates  it  to  the  ut- 
most without  succeeding  in  explaining  it. 

This  theory  of  emanation  as  expounded  in 
the  "Zohar"  is  indeed  strangely  obscure,  un- 
certain, and  heteroclite,  lapsing  every  moment 
into  anthropomorphism. 

To  make  room  for  the  universe,  God,  who 
filled  space,  concentrated  Himself;  and  in  the 
space  left  free  He  irradiated  His  thought  and 
exteriorized  a  portion  of  Himself.  This  first 
emanation  or  irradiation  is  the  first  Sephira, 
"the  Crown."  It  represents  the  Infinite  hav- 
ing moved  one  step  toward  the  finite,  non- 
existence  having  taken  one  step  toward  exist- 
ence, the  first  substance.  From  this  first  Se- 
phira, which  is  still  almost  non-existence,  but  a 
non-existence  more  accessible  to  our  intelli- 
169 


The  Great  Secret 

gence,  emanate  or  develop  two  further  Sephi- 
roth:  Wisdom,  the  male  principle,  and  Intelli- 
gence, the  female  principle;  that  is,  on  proceed- 
ing from  the  Crown  the  contraries  appear,  the 
first  differentiation  of  things.  From  the  union 
of  Wisdom  and  Intelligence  is  born  Knowledge; 
we  have  thus  the  pure  Idea,  Thought  exterio- 
rized, and  the  Voice  or  Speech  which  connects 
the  first  with  the  second.  This  first  Trinity 
of  Sephiroth  is  followed  by  another :  Grace  or 
Splendor,  Justice  or  Severity,  and  their  media- 
trix, Beauty.  Lastly  the  Sephiroth,  mingling 
in  Beauty,  develop  yet  further,  and  produce  a 
third  group:  Victory,  Splendor,  Foundation; 
and  then  the  Sephira  Empire  or  Royalty,  which 
brings  into  existence  all  the  Sephiroth  in  the 
visible  universe. 

The  Sephiroth  as  a  whole,  moreover,  consti- 
tute the  mysterious  Adam  Kadmon,  the  primor- 
dial super-man,  of  whom  the  occultists  will 
have  much  to  tell  us,  and  who  himself  repre- 
sents the  universe. 

This  explanation  of  the  inexplicable,  like  all 
explanations  of  the  sort,  really  explains  noth- 
ing whatever,  and  conceals  the  incomprehensi- 
ble beneath  a  flood  of  ingenious  metaphors. 
Obeying,  as  previous  religions  had  done,  the 
necessity  of  building  a  bridge  between  the  in- 
finite and  the  finite,  between  the  inconceivable 
and  conception,  instead  of  contenting  itself,  as 
170 


The  Cabala 

did  India,  with  the  renewal  or  the  duplication 
of  the  Supreme  Cause,  or  the  Egyptian,  Persia, 
and  Neoplatonic  Logos,  it  multiplies  the  bridges 
by  multiplying  the  intermediaries;  but  numer- 
ous though  they  be,  these  ladders  none  the  less 
end  in  the  same  confession  of  ignorance.  At 
all  events,  this  explanation,  by  concealing  this 
fresh  admission  beneath  a  mountain  of  images, 
has  the  advantage  of  relegating  to  a  sort  of 
inaccessible  in  pace  the  first  confession,  the  prin- 
cipal and  most  embarrassing  admission,  which 
places  the  First  Cause  and  the  existence  of 
God  beyond  our  reach.  After  the  creation  of 
the  Sephiroth  and  of  the  universe  the  En-sof 
is  generally  forgotten;  like  the  That  of  India 
or  the  Nu  of  Egypt,  it  is  by  preference  passed 
over  in  silence;  and  it  is  but  rarely  that  ques- 
tions concerning  it  are  asked.  It  is  too  secret, 
too  mysterious,  too  incomprehensible  even  for 
a  secret  and  mysterious  doctrine  like  that  of 
the  cabala,  and  the  whole  attention  is  given 
solely  to  the  emanations  which  the  imagination 
attributes  to  it  and  which  one  seems  to  know 
because  they  have  been  given  names,  virtues, 
functions,  and  attributes:  in  a  word,  because 
man  himself  has  created  them. 

4 

When  did  the  En-sof  begin  to  project  its 
emanations?     To   this  question,   which   India 
171 


The  Great  Secret 

answered  by  the  theory  of  the  nights  and  days 
of  Brahma,  without  beginning  or  end,  the  ca- 
bala does  not  give  a  very  clear  reply.  "Before 
God  created  this  world,"  it  says,  "He  had 
created  a  great  many  worlds,  and  had  caused 
them  to  disappear  until  the  thought  came  to 
him  to  create  this  one."  1  What  has  become 
of  these  vanished  worlds?  "It  is  the  privi- 
lege," replies  the  cabala,  "of  the  strength  of 
the  Supreme  King  that  these  worlds,  which 
could  not  take  shape,  do  not  perish;  that  noth- 
ing perishes,  even  to  the  breath  of  His  mouth; 
everything  has  its  place  and  its  destination,  and 
God  knows  what  He  does  with  it.  Even  the 
speech  of  man  and  the  sound  of  his  voice  do 
not  lapse  into  non-existence;  everything  has  its 
place  and  its  dwelling."  2 

And  what  of  our  world?  Whither  is  it  go- 
ing? What  is  its  destiny?  The  Zohar  being 
a  heteroclite  production,  a  very  late  compila- 
tion, its  doctrine  in  this  respect  is  much  less 
definite  than  that  of  Brahmanism;  but  if  de- 
tached from  the  illogical  and  alien  elements 
which  often  cross  or  divert  its  course,  it  like- 
wise attains  the  stage  of  pantheism,  and  by  way 
of  pantheism  it  achieves  the  inevitable  opti- 
mism. The  En-sof,  the  Infinite,  is  everything; 
consequently  everything  is  the  En-sof.  To  man- 

1  "Zohar";   III,  6i-b. 

2  "Zohar";  II,  loo-b. 

172 


The  Cabala 

ifest  itself,  the  pure  abstraction  develops  it- 
self by  means  of  intermediaries  and,  in  its  good- 
ness voluntarily  degrading  itself,  ends  in 
thought,  and  in  matter,  which  is  the  last  deg- 
radation of  thought;  and  when  the  Messianic 
era  conies  "everything  will  return  into  its  root 
as  it  emerged  therefrom."  1 

Man,  who  in  the  "Zohar"  is  the  center  of 
the  world  and  its  microcosm,  may  from  the 
moment  of  his  death  rejoice  in  this  return  to 
perfection;  and  his  purified  soul  will  receive 
the  kiss  of  peace  which  "unites  it  anew  and 
forever  to  its  root,  its  principle."  2 

And  evil?  Evil,  in  the  "Zohar,"  as  in  Brah- 
manism,  is  matter.  "Man,  by  his  victory 
over  evil,  triumphs  over  matter,  or  rather  sub- 
ordinates the  matter  within  him  to  a  higher 
vocation;  he  ennobles  matter,  making  it  ascend 
from  the  extreme  point  to  which  it  was  rele- 
gated to  the  place  of  its  origin.  In  him,  who 
is  the  great  consciousness,  matter  acquires  con- 
sciousness of  the  distance  that  separates  it 
from  the  Supreme  Good,  and  strives  to  ap- 
proach the  latter.  Through  man  the  darkness 
aspires  toward  the  light,  the  multiple  toward 
the  single.  The  whole  of  nature  aspires  to- 
ward God. 

"Through  man  God  remakes  Himself,  hav- 

1  "Zohar";  III,  296. 

2  "Zohar";   I,  68-a. 


The  Great  Secret 

ing  passed  through  the  whole  splendid  divinity 
of  living  creatures.  Since  man  is  an  expression 
epitomizing  all  things,  when  he  has  overcome 
the  evil  in  himself  he  has  overcome  the  evil 
in  all  things;  he  draws  with  him,  as  he  climbs, 
all  the  lower  elements,  and  his  ascent  entails 
the  ascent  of  the  whole  cosmos."  1 

But  why  was  evil  necessary?  "Why,"  asks 
the  "Zohar,"  "if  the  soul  is  of  heavenly  es- 
sence, does  it  descend  upon  the  earth?"  The 
reply  to  this  great  problem,  which  no  religion 
has  given,  the  "Zohar,"  in  accordance  with  its 
habit  when  embarrassed,  evades  by  means  of 
an  allegory :  "A  king  sent  his  son  into  the  coun- 
try that  he  might  grow  strong  and  sound  there 
and  acquire  the  necessary  knowledge.  After 
some  time  he  was  informed  that  his  son  was 
now  grown  up;  that  he  was  a  strong,  healthy 
youth,  and  that  his  education  was  completed. 
He  then,  because  he  loved  him,  sent  the  queen 
herself  to  fetch  him  and  bring  him  back  to  the 
palace.  In  the  same  way  nature  bears  the 
King  of  the  universe  a  son,  the  divine  Soul,  and 
the  King  sends  him  into  the  country,  that  is,  the 
terrestial  universe,  in  order  that  he  may  grow 
strong,  and  gain  in  nobility  and  dignity."  2 

The  disciples  of  Rabbi  Simon  ben  Zemach 
Duran,  one  of  the  great  scholars  of  the 

1 S.  Karppe,  op.  cit.;  p.  478. 
2  "Zohar";  I,  245. 

174 


The  Cabala 

"Zohar,"  asked  him:  "Would  it  not  have 
been  better  if  man  had  never  been  born, 
rather  than  that  he  should  be  born  with 
the  faculty  of  sinning  and  angering  God?" 
And  the  master  replied:  "By  no  means,  for  the 
universe  in  its  actual  form  is  the  best  thing  in 
existence.  Now,  the  law  is  indispensable  to 
the  maintenance  of  this  universe,  otherwise  the 
universe  would  be  a  desert;  and  man  in  his 
turn  is  indispensable  to  the  law."  The  disci- 
ples understood  and  said:  "Assuredly  God  did 
not  create  the  world  without  cause;  the  law  is 
indeed  the  raiment  of  God;  it  is  that  by  which 
He  is  accessible.  Without  human  virtue,  God 
would  be  but  miserably  arrayed.  He  who  does 
evil  soils  in  his  soul  the  raiment  of  God,  and 
he  who  does  good  puts  on  the  divine  splen- 
dor." 1  We  should  indeed  be  gracious  were 
we  more  exacting  than  these  obliging  and  re- 
spectful disciples. 

Another  question  of  the  utmost  importance, 
that  of  eternal  punishment,  is  likewise  evaded. 
Logically,  a  pantheistic  religion  cannot  admit 
that  God  could  chastise  and  eternally  torture  a 
portion  of  Himself.  The  "Zohar"  certainly 
says  somewhere:  "How  many  souls  and  spirits 
are  there  eternally  wandering,  who  never  again 
behold  the  courts  of  heaven?" 

But  in  another  section  it  expressly  teaches 

i  "Zohar";  I,  23-a-b. 

175 


The  Great  Secret 

the  doctrine  of  transmigration;  that  is,  the 
gradual  purification  of  the  soul  by  means  of 
successive  existences;  and  it  bases  this  doctrine, 
obviously  borrowed  from  the  great  religions  of 
an  earlier  period,  on  certain  passages  of  the 
Bible;  among  others,  on  Ecclesiastes,  Chap.  IV, 
v.  2,  in  which  we  read:  "Wherefore  I  praised 
the  dead  which  are  already  dead  more  than  the 
living  which  are  yet  alive."  "What  is  meant," 
asks  the  "Zohar,"  "by  the  dead  which  are  al- 
ready dead?"  They  are  those  who  have  al- 
ready died  once  before  this;  that  is,  they  were 
no  longer  bound  on  their  first  pilgrimage 
through  life.  Now,  it  is  obvious  that  the  doc- 
trine of  a  purifying  transmigration  must  nec- 
essarily exclude  eternal  punishment. 

5 

The  "Zohar,"  then,  as  I  have  already 
stated,  is  a  vast  anonymous  compilation  which, 
under  the  pretext  of  revealing  to  the  initiate 
the  secret  meaning  of  the  Bible,  and  especially 
of  the  Pentateuch,  decks  out  in  Jewish  clothing 
the  confessions  of  ignorance  of  the  great  reli- 
gions of  an  earlier  period,  loading  these  gar- 
ments with  all  the  new  and  complicated  adorn- 
ments provided  by  the  Essenes,  the  Neoplato- 
nists,  the  Gnostics,  and  even  the  first  few  cen- 
turies of  Christianity.  Whether  it  admits  the 
fact  or  not,  it  is,  in  respect  of  the  most  im- 
176 


The  Cabala 

portant  points,  plainly  agnostic,  as  is  Brah- 
manism.  Like  Brahmanism,  it  is  also  panthe- 
istic. For  the  "Zohar"  likewise  the  creation  is 
rather  an  emanation;  evil  is  matter,  division 
or  multiplicity,  and  good  is  the  return  to  the 
spirit  and  to  unity.  Lastly,  it  admits  the  trans- 
migration of  souls  and  their  purification,  and 
therefore  Karma,  as  well  as  the  final  absorp- 
tion into  the  divine;  that  is,  Nirvana. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  we  have  here  for 
the  first  time — for  other  statements  have  not 
come  down  to  us — an  esoteric  doctrine  pro- 
claiming itself  as  such;  and  this  doctrine  has 
nothing  more  to  teach  us  than  that  which  we 
were  taught,  without  reticence  and  without  mys- 
tery— at  all  events,  at  the  outset, — by  the  prim- 
itive religions.  Like  the  latter,  with  its 
wholesale  admissions  and  its  expedients,  differ- 
ent in  form  but  identical  at  heart,  for  passing 
from  non-existence  to  existence,  from  the  in- 
finite to  the  finite,  from  the  unknowable  to  the 
known,  it  follows  the  same  rationalistic  tra- 
dition that  strives  to  explain  the  inexplicable  by 
plausible  hypotheses  and  inductions,  to  which 
we  might  give  another  shape  and  other  names, 
but  which,  taking  them  on  the  whole,  we  could 
not,  even  to-day,  perceptibly  improve.  At 
most  we  might  be  tempted  to  renounce  all  ex- 
planation whatsoever  and  extend  our  con- 
fession of  ignorance  to  include  the  sum  total  of 
177 


The  Great  Secret 

the  origins,  the  manifestations,  and  the  pur- 
poses of  life.  Perhaps  this  would  be  the  wisest 
course. 

It  shows  us  that  it  is  highly  probable  that 
no  secret  doctrine  ever  was  or  ever  could  be 
other  than  secret;  and  that  the  loftiest  revela- 
tions which  we  have  ever  been  vouchsafed  were 
always  elicited  from  man  by  man  himself. 

The  importance  assumed  by  this  secret  doc- 
trine during  the  middle  ages  may  readily  be 
imagined.  Known  only  to  a  few  initiates, 
wrapped  up  in  incomprehensible  formulae  and 
images,  whispered  "from  mouth  to  ear"  in  the 
midst  of  terrible  dangers,  it  had  a  subterra- 
nean radiance,  a  sort  of  gloomy  and  irresistible 
fascination.  It  surveyed  the  world  from  a  far 
loftier  point  of  view  than  that  of  the  Bible, 
which  it  regarded  as  a  tissue  of  allegories  be- 
hind which  was  hidden  a  truth  known  to  it 
alone;  it  yielded  to  mankind,  through  the 
thickets  of  its  fantastic  and  parasitical  vegeta- 
tion, the  last  echoes  of  the  noble  precepts,  of 
human  reason  at  its  dawn. 


178 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  ALCHEMISTS 


ALL  the  occultism,  alchemy,  or  hermetism 
of  the  middle  ages  proceeds  from  the 
cabala  and  the  Alexandrian  version  of  the  Bi- 
ble, with  the  addition,  perhaps,  of  certain  tra- 
ditions of  magical  practice  which  were  very 
widespread  in  ancient  Egypt  and  Chaldea. 

From  the  theosophical  and  philosophical 
portion  of  this  occultism  we  have  nothing  to 
learn.  It  is  merely  a  distorted  reflection,  an 
extremely  corrupt  and  often  unrecognizable 
repetition  of  what  we  have  already  seen  and 
heard.  The  mysterious  paraphernalia  with 
which  it  surrounds  itself,  which  fascinates  and 
deludes  the  beholder  at  the  very  outset,  is 
merely  an  indispensable  precaution  to  conceal 
from  the  eyes  of  the  church  the  forbidden 
statements,  perilous  and  heretical,  of  which 
it  is  full.  The  occult  iconography,  the  signs, 
stars,  triangles,  pentagrams,  and  pentacles, 
were  at  bottom  mnemonics,  passwords,  puns, 
or  conundrums,  which  allowed  confederates  to 
179 


The  Great  Secret 

recognize  one  another  and  to  exchange  or  pub- 
lish truths  which  meant  the  constant  threat  of 
the  stake,  but  which  to  judge  by  the  explana- 
tions which  have  been  offered  us,  do  not  and 
could  not  conceal  anything  that  does  not  to- 
day seem  perfectly  admissible  and  inoffensive. 

Alchemy  even,  which  is  still  the  most  inter- 
esting department  of  medieval  occultism,  is 
after  all  no  more  than  a  camouflage,  a  sort  of 
screen,  behind  which  the  true  initiates  used  to 
search  for  the  secret  of  life.  "The  great 
task,"  says  Eliphas  Levi,  "was  not,  properly 
speaking,  the  secret  of  the  transmutation  of 
metals,  which  was  an  accessory  result,  but  the 
universal  arcanum  of  life,  the  search  for  the 
central  point  of  tranformation  where  light  be- 
comes matter  and  is  condensed  into  a  world 
which  contains  in  itself  the  principle  of  move- 
ment and  of  life.  ...  It  is  the  fixation  of  as- 
tral light  by  a  sovereign  magic  of  the  will." 
And  this  leads  us  to  the  odic  or  odylic  phenom- 
ena of  which  we  shall  speak  in  a  later  chap- 
ter, and  puts  us  on  the  track  of  this  fixation. 

What  is  more,  in  the  eyes  of  the  higher  ini- 
tiates, the  search  for  gold  was  only  a  symbol, 
concealing  the  search  for  the  divine  and  the 
divine  faculties  in  man;  and  it  was  only  the  in- 
ferior alchemists  who  took  literally  the  cabalis- 
tic instructions  of  their  conjuring-books,  wore 
themselves  out  in  the  hope  of  solving  problems, 
180 


The  Alchemists 

and  ruined  themselves  in  order  to  make  ex- 
periments which  nevertheless  resulted  in  the 
progress  of  chemistry  and  in  discoveries  which 
in  some  respects  that  science  has  never  yet  sur- 
passed. 


On  the  other  hand,  people  are  too  ready  to 
suppose  that  the  occultism  of  the  middle  ages 
was  preeminently  diabolic.  The  truth  is  that 
the  initiates  did  not  and  could  not  believe  in 
the  devil,  since  they  did  not  accept  the  Chris- 
tian revelation  as  the  church  presented  it  to 
them.  "No  demons  outside  of  humanity,"  was 
one  of  the  fundamental  axioms  of  the  higher 
occultism.  "To  attribute  what  we  do  not  un- 
derstand to  the  devil,"  said  Van  Helmont,  "is 
the  result  of  unlimited  idleness."  "One  must 
not  give  the  devil  the  whole  credit,"  protested 
Paracelsus. 

Devils  and  evil  spirits,  fallen  angels  or  the 
souls  of  the  damned,  surrounded  by  eternal 
flames,  will  be  found  crawling  only  in  the  dark 
corners  of  black  magic  or  witchcraft.  The 
phantasmagoria  of  nocturnal  revels  have  too 
often  concealed  from  us  the  true  occultism, 
which  was,  above  all,  though  surrounded  by 
the  incessant  peril  of  death  and  encompassed 
by  hostile  shadows,  a  tentative  yet  passionate 
search  for  truth,  or  at  least  for  a  seeming  truth, 
181 


The  Great  Secret 

for  there  is  nothing  else  in  this  world;  a  truth 
which  had  once  shone  as  a  beacon  through  the 
darkness,  which  was  possibly  still  shining  else- 
where, but  which  was  apparently  lost,  so  that 
only  its  precious  but  shapeless  relics  were  to  be 
found,  mingled  with  the  dense  dust  of  irritating 
and  disheartening  falsehoods,  while  the  highest 
talents  were  wasted  in  a  thankless  process  of 
sifting  and  selection. 

3 

To  dismiss  the  question  of  infernal  spirits: 
the  faithful  none  the  less  believed  in  the  exist- 
ence and  intervention  of  other  invisible  beings. 
They  were  convinced  that  the  world  which  es- 
capes our  senses  is  far  more  densely  peopled 
than  that  which  we  perceive,  and  that  we  are 
living  in  the  midst  of  a  host  of  diaphanous  yet 
attentive  and  active  presences,  which  as  a  rule 
affect  us  without  our  knowledge,  but  which  we 
can  influence  in  our  turn  by  a  special  training 
of  the  will.  These  invisible  beings  were  not 
inhabitants  of  hell,  since  for  the  initiates  of 
the  middle  ages,  almost  as  certainly  as  for  the 
believers  in  the  great  religions  in  the  days  when 
initiation  was  not  yet  necessary,  hell  was  not  a 
place  of  torture  and  malediction  but  a  state  of 
the  soul  after  death.  They  were  either  wan- 
dering, disembodied  spirits,  worth  very  much 
what  they  had  been  worth  during  their  life  on 
182 


The  Alchemists 

earth,  or  they  were  the  spirits  of  beings  who 
had  not  as  yet  been  incarnated.  These  were 
known  as  elementals;  they  were  neutral  spirits, 
indifferent,  morally  amorphous,  devoid  of  will, 
doing  good  or  evil  according  to  the  will  of  him 
who  had  learned  to  rule  them. 

It  is  incontestable  that  certain  experiments 
carried  out  by  our  spiritualists,  notably  those 
in  connection  with  cross-correspondence  and 
posthumous  appearances  (of  which  we  have  al- 
most scientific  proof) ,  and  certain  phenomena 
of  materialization  and  levitation,  compel  us 
to  reconsider  the  plausibility  of  these  theo- 
ries. 

As  for  the  instances  of  evocation,  which  of- 
ten fluctuate  between  "high"  magic  and  sor- 
cery or  black  magic,  and  which  in  the  eyes  of 
the  public,  occupy,  with  alchemy  and  astrology, 
the  three  culminating  pinnacles  of  occultism: 
their  solemn  paraphernalia,  their  cabalistic 
formulas,  and  their  impressive  ritual  excepted, 
they  precisely  correspond  with  the  more  famil- 
iar evocations  which  are  practised  daily  about 
our  turning-tables,  or  the  humble  "ouija"  or 
magic  mirrors.  They  correspond  also  with  the 
manifestations  which  were  obtained,  for  exam- 
ple, by  the  celebrated  Eusapia  Paladino,  and 
which  are  at  the  present  time  being  produced, 
under  the  strictest  "controls,"  by  Madame  Bis- 
son's  medium ;  with  this  difference,  that  instead 
183 


The  Great  Secret 

of  the  human  phantom  expected  by  those  pres- 
ent at  a  modern  seance,  the  believers  of  the 
middle  ages  thought  to  see  the  devil  in  person; 
and  the  devil  who  haunted  their  minds  appeared 
to  them  as  they  imagined  him. 

Is  autosuggestion  responsible  for  these  mani- 
festations, or  collective  suggestion,  or  exuda- 
tion, or  the  transference  or  crystallization  of 
spiritualized  matter  borrowed  from  the  specta- 
tors, with  which  is  intermingled  some  extrater- 
restrial and  unknown  element?  If  it  is  impos- 
sible to  distinguish  such  an  element  when  we 
are  dealing  with  facts  which  occur  before  our 
eyes,  it  would  be  all  the  more  audacious  to 
form  a  decision  in  the  case  of  phenomena  which 
occurred  some  hundreds  of  years  ago  and  are 
known  to  us  only  through  a  more  or  less  par- 
tial narrative. 


Lastly,  alchemy  and  astrology,  the  two  re- 
maining pinnacles  of  occultism,  were,  in  the  oc- 
cultism of  the  middle  a'ges,  second-rate  sciences 
which,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Great  Se- 
cret, do  not  offer  any  novel  element,  their  Greek, 
Hebrew,  and  Arab  origin  being  connected  with 
Egypt  and  Chaldea  only  by  means  of  apocry- 
phal and  comparatively  recent  writings.  Pierre 
Berthelot,  in  his  work  on  Les  Origines  de  I'Al- 
chimie,  has  given  us  a  masterly  survey  of  the 
184 


The  Alchemists 

alchemist's  science.  He  has  exhausted  the  sub- 
ject, or  at  least  the  chemical  aspect  of  it;  but 
his  work  might  perhaps  be  more  complete  from 
the  point  of  view  of  hyperchemistry  or  meta- 
chemistry — or  of  psychochemistry,  which  would 
seem  to  be  no  less  important.  It  is  likewise 
greatly  to  be  desired  that  some  great  astrono- 
mer-philosopher should  give  us,  in  a  work  upon 
astrology,  the  pendant  of  this  admirable  vol- 
ume; but  hitherto  the  data  have  been  so  scanty 
that  the  undertaking  would  hardly  seem  to  be 
possible.  As  much  might  be  done  for  hermetic 
medicine,  which,  for  that  matter,  is  connected 
with  alchemy  and  astrology. 

But  it  is  possible  that  alchemy  and  astrology, 
which  after  all  are  merely  transcendental  chem- 
istry and  astronomy  (professing  to  transcend 
matter  and  the  stars  in  order  to  arrive  at  those 
spiritual  and  eternal  principles  which  are  the 
essence  of  the  one  and  control  the  others), 
would  have  no  surprises  or  revelations  in  store 
for  us  if  we  could  go  back  directly  to  their 
Hindu,  Egyptian,  and  Chaldean  origins;  which 
has  not  as  yet  been  practicable,  for  we  have 
nothing  to  serve  as  comparison  but  the  famous 
Leyden  Papyrus,  which  is  merely  the  memoran- 
dum-book of  an  Egyptian  goldsmith,  containing 
formulae  for  making  alloys,  gilding  metals,  dye- 
ing stuffs  purple,  and  imitating  or  adulterating 
gold  and  silver. 

185 


The  Great  Secret 

5 

Among  the  medieval  occultists,  almost  all 
of  whom  were  alchemists,  we  shall  confine  our- 
selves to  recalling  the  names  of  Raymond  Lully 
(thirteenth  century),  doctor  illuminatus  and 
author  of  the  Ars  Magna,  to-day  almost  un- 
readable; Nicolas  Flamel  (fifteenth  century), 
who  according  to  Berthelot  is  merely  a  char- 
latan pure  and  simple;  Reuchlin;  Weigel,  Boeh- 
me's  teacher;  Bernardo  of  Treviso;  Basil  Val- 
entin, whose  special  subject  of  investigation 
was  antimony;  the  two  Isaacs,  father  and  son; 
Trithemius,  whom  Eliphas  Lev!  calls  "the 
greatest  dogmatic  magician  of  the  middle 
ages,"  although  his  famous  cryptographical- 
works — his  Polygraphla  or  his  Steganogra- 
phia — consist  of  a  rather  puerile  playing  upon 
words  and  letters;  and  his  pupil  Cornelius 
Agrippa,  author  of  De  Occulta  Philosophia, 
who  simply  recapitulates  the  theories  of  the 
Alexandrian  school  and,  in  Eliphas  Levi's 
words,  is  no  more  than  "an  audacious  pro- 
faner,  fortunately  extremely  superficial  in  his 
writings."  We  have  still  to  mention  Guil- 
laume  Postel,  a  sixteenth  century  occultist,  who 
was  acquainted  with  Greek,  Hebrew,  and  Ara- 
bic, was  a  great  traveler,  and  brought  back  to 
Europe  some  important  Oriental  manuscripts; 
among  others  the  works  of  Aboul-Feda,  the 
186 


The  Alchemists 

Arab  historian  of  the  thirteenth  century.  "The 
beloved  and  upright  Guillaume  Postel,"  writes 
Eliphas  Levi,  in  a  letter  to  Baron  Spedalieri, 
"our  father  in  the  Sacred  Science,  since  we 
owe  to  him  our  knowledge  of  the  'Sepher 
Yerizah'  and  the  'Zohar,'  would  have  been  the 
greatest  initiate  of  his  century  had  not  ascetic 
mysticism  and  enforced  celibacy  filled  his  brain 
with  the  heady  fumes  of  enthusiasm  which 
sometimes  caused  his  lofty  intellect  to  wander"; 
a  remark,  be  it  said  in  passing,  which  might 
be  applied  to  other  hermetists  of  other  times 
and  nations. 

After  mention  of  Heinrich  Khunrath,  Os- 
wald Crollins,  etc.,  we  come  to  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  earlier  years  of  which  were  the 
great  period  of  alchemy,  which  began  to  ap- 
proximate to  science  properly  so  called.  Gas- 
tric juice  was  discovered  by  Van  Helmont, 
sulphate  of  soda  and  the  heavy  oils  of  tar  by 
Glauber,  who  also  had  a  notion  of  chlorine, 
while  Kunckel  discovered  phosphorus. 

Were  I  writing  a  general  history  of  occult- 
ism, instead  of  merely  inquiring  what  new 
things  we  may  learn  from  the  last  of  the 
adepts,  whether  they  were  conscious  or  not  of 
the  occult  wisdom  whose  trial  we  have  fol- 
lowed through  the  ages,  I  should  have  been 
obliged  to  linger  for  a  moment  over  the  myste- 
rious Templars,  who  adopted  in  part  the  Jew- 
187 


The  Great  Secret 

ish  traditions  and  the  narratives  of  the  "Tal- 
mud," and  were  followed  by  the  Rosicrucians. 
I  ought  also  to  single  out  and  consider  at 
rather  greater  length  two  fantastic  and  enig- 
matical figures  who  dominate  and  summarize 
all  the  occultism  of  the  middle  ages;  namely, 
'Paracelsus  and  Jacob  Boehme.  But  when  we 
consider  them  closely  we  discover  that  what- 
ever their  pretensions,  they  did  not  deduce 
from  an  unknown  source  the  revelations  which, 
they  published  and  which  so  perturbed  their 
contemporaries. 

Philippus  Aureolus  Theophrastus  Bombastes 
Von  Hohenheim,  known  as  Paracelsus  (an  ap- 
proximate translation  of  Hohenheim),  was 
born  in  Switzerland  in  1493  and  died  in  Salz- 
burg in  1541.  He  bears  the  burden  of  an  un- 
just legend  which  represents  him  as  a  drunkard, 
a  debauchee,  a  charlatan,  and  a  lunatic.  He 
certainly  had  many  faults,  and  he  seems  at 
times  to  have  been  somewhat  unbalanced;  none 
the  less  he  remains  one  of  the  most  extraordi- 
nary persons  mentioned  in  history.  He  was 
a  Neoplatonist  and  consequently  was  not  igno- 
rant of  the  Alexandrian  writings  accessible  to 
the  hermetics  of  his  time ;  but  it  is  probable  that 
during  his  travels  in  Turkey  and  Egypt  he  was 
able  to  obtain  a  more  direct  knowledge  of  cer- 
tain Asiatic  traditions  relating  to  the  etheric 
or  astral  body  upon  which  he  based  the  whole 
1 88 


The  Alchemists 

of  his  medical  theories.  He  taught,  in  fact,  in 
accordance  with  the  ancient  Hindu  treatises 
which  have  since  then  been  brought  to  light 
by  the  theosophists,  that  our  maladies  are 
caused  not  by  the  physical  body  but  by  the 
etheric  or  astral  body,  which  corresponds  pretty 
closely  with  what  to-day  is  termed  the  sub- 
consciousness,  and,  consequently  that  it  was  be- 
fore all  necessary  to  act  upon  this  subconscious- 
ness.  Certain  it  is  that  many  facts  in  many  cir- 
circumstances  tend  to  confirm  this  theory,  and  it 
may  be  that  the  therapeutics  of  to-morrow 
will  lead  us  in  this  direction.  According  to 
Paracelsus,  even  plants  have  an  etheric  body, 
and  medicaments  act  not  in  virtue  of  their  chem- 
ical properties,  but  in  virtue  of  their  astral 
properties;  an  hypothesis  which  would  seem  to 
be  corroborated  by  the  comparatively  recent 
discovery  of  the  "od,"  which  we  shall  consider 
in  a  later  chapter. 

His  conceptions  relating  to  the  existence  of  a 
universal  vital  fluid,  the  Akahsa  of  the  Hindus, 
which  he  called  the  Alkahest,  and  of  the  astral 
light  of  the  cabalists,  are  also  among  those  to 
which  our  modern  ideas  of  the  preponderant 
functions  of  the  ether  are  calling  our  attention. 
It  is  obvious,  on  the  other  hand,  that  he  often 
exceeds  all  bounds,  as  when  he  carries  to  alto- 
gether excessive  lengths  a  childish  systematiza- 
tion  of  purely  apparent  or  verbal  concordances 
189 


The  Great  Secret 

between  certain  portions  of  the  human  body 
and  those  of  medicinal  plants;  while  his  asser- 
tions on  the  subject  of  the  Archai,  a  species  of 
special  or  individual  jinnee  placed  in  charge  of 
the  functions  of  the  various  organs,  and  the 
fantastic  chalatanry  of  his  homunculus  are 
equally  indefensible.  But  these  errors  were 
inherent  in  the  science  of  his  day  and  are  pos- 
sibly not  much  more  ridiculous  than  our  own. 
When  all  is  said,  there  remains  the  memory  of 
a  truly  amazing  pioneer  and  a  prodigious  vis- 
ionary. 

As  for  Jacob  Boehme,  the  famous  cobbler  of 
Goerlitz,  his  case  would  be  miraculous  and  ab- 
solutely inexplicable  if  he  had  really  been  the 
illiterate  that  some  have  called  him.  But  this 
legend  must  decidedly  be  abandoned.  Boehme 
had  studied  the  German  theosophists,  notably 
Paracelsus,  and  was  perfectly  familiar  with  the 
Neoplatonists,  whose  doctrines,  indeed,  he  re- 
produced, recasting  them  to  some  extent  and 
wrapping  them  up  in  a  more  obscure  phrase- 
ology, which  none  the  less  was  often  unexpected 
and  extremely  impressive;  and  mingling  them 
with  the  elements  of  the  cabala  and  a  certain 
amount  of  mystical  mathematics  and  of  al- 
chemy. I  refer  those  who  may  be  interested 
in  this  strange  and  assuredly  brilliant  though 
very  unequal  spirit — for  his  work  is  full  of  un- 
190 


The  Alchemists 

readable  rubbish — to  an  essay  which  Emile 
Boutroux  has  devoted  to  him:  Le  Philosophe 
Allemand  Jacob  Boehme.  They  could  have 
no  better  guide. 


19* 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  MODERN  OCCULTISTS 


BEFORE  the  discoveries  of  the  Indianists 
and  Egyptologists,  the  modern  occultists, 
who — with  the  exception  of  Swedenborg,  a 
great  isolated  visionary — may  be  counted  as 
descending  from  Martinez  Pasqualis,  who  was 
born  in  1715  and  died  in  1779,  had  perforce  to 
study  the  same  texts  and  the  same  traditions, 
applying  themselves,  according  to  taste,  to  the 
cabala  or  to  the  Alexandrian  theories.  Pas- 
qualis wrote  nothing,  but  left  behind  him  the 
legend  of  an  extraordinary  magician.  His  dis- 
ciple, Claude  de  Saint-Martin,  the  "Unknown 
Philosopher,"  was  a  sort  of  intuitive  theoso- 
phist,  who  ended  by  rediscovering  Jacob 
Boehme.  His  books,  carefully  thought  out  and 
admirably  written,  may  still  be  read  with  plea- 
sure and  even  with  advantage.  Without  lin- 
gering over  the  Comte  de  Saint-Germain,  who 
claimed  to  retain  the  memory  of  all  his  pre- 
vious existences,  Cagliostro,  the  mighty  illu- 
sionist and  formidable  charlatan,  the  Marquis 
d'Argens,  Dom  Pernetty,  d'Espremenil,  La- 
192 


The  Modern  Occultists 

vater,  Eckartshausen,  Delille  de  Salle,  the 
Abbe  Terrasson,  Bergasse,  Clootz,  Court  de 
Gebelin,  or  all  the  mystics  who  toward  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  were  to  be  found  in 
swarms,  in  aristocratic  circles  and  the  masonic 
lodges,  and  were  members  of  the  secret  socie- 
ties which  were  preparing  the  way  for  the 
French  Revolution  but  have  nothing  of  impor- 
tance to  teach  us,  we  may  pause  for  a  moment 
at  the  name  of  Fabre  d'Olivet,  a  writer  of  the 
first  rank,  who  has  given  us  a  new  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Genesis  of  Moses,  audacious  and 
impressive.  Being  no  Hebrew  scholar  I  am 
not  competent  to  pronounce  upon  its  value,  but 
the  cabala  seems  to  confirm  it;  and  it  presents 
itself  surrounded  by  an  imposing  scientific  and 
philosophical  equipment. 


And  we  now  come  to  Eliphas  Levi  and  his 
books,  with  their  alarming  titles:  "A  History 
of  Magic,"  "The  Key  to  the  Great  Mysteries," 
"Dogma  and  Ritual  of  the  Higher  Magic," 
"The  Great  Arcanum,  or  Occultism  Unveiled," 
etc.,  the  last  master  of  occultism  properly  so 
called,  of  that  occultism  which  immediately  pre- 
cedes that  of  our  metapsychists,  who  have  def- 
initely renounced  the  cabala,  Gnosticism,  and 
the  Alexandrians,  relying  wholly  on  scientific 
experiment. 

193 


The  Great  Secret 

Eliphas  Levi,  whose  true  name  was  Alphonse- 
Louis-Constant,  was  born  in  1810  and  died  in 
1875.  In  a  certain  sense  he  epitomized  the 
whole  of  the  occultism  of  the  middle  ages,  with 
its  fumbling  progress,  its  half-truths,  its  def- 
initely limited  knowledge,  its  intuitions,  its  ir- 
ritating obscurities,  its  exasperating  reticences, 
its  errors  and  prejudices.  Writing  before  he 
had  the  opportunity  or  the  inclination  to  profit 
by  the  principal  discoveries  of  the  Egyptolo- 
gists and  the  Indianists  and  the  work  of  con- 
temporary criticism,  and  himself  devoid  of  all 
critical  spirit,  he  studied  only  the  medieval  doc- 
uments of  which  we  have  spoken;  and  apart 
from  the  "Sepher  Yerizah,"  the  "Zohar" 
(which,  for  that  matter,  he  knew  only  from  the 
fantastical  fragments  in  the  Kabbala  Denu- 
data),  the  "Talmud,"  and  the  Book  of  Revela- 
tion, he  applied  himself  by  preference  to  the 
most  undeniably  apocryphal  of  these  docu- 
ments. In  addition  to  those  which  I  have 
mentioned  his  three  "bedside  books"  were  the 
"Trismegistus,"  and  "The  Tarot." 

The  "Book  of  Enoch,"  attributed  by  legend 
to  the  patriarch  Enoch,  the  son  of  Jared  and 
the  father  of  Methuselah,  must  actually  be  as- 
signed to  a  date  not  far  removed  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Christian  era,  since  the  latest 
event  with  which  its  author  was  acquainted  was 
194 


The  Modern  Occultists 

the  war  of  Antiochus  Sidetes  against  John  Hyr- 
canus.  It  is  an  apocalyptic  book,  probably 
from  the  pen  of  an  Essene,  as  is  proved  by  his 
angelology,  which  exerted  a  profound  influence 
over  Jewish  mysticism  before  the  advent  of 
the  "Zohar." 

The  "Writings  of  Hermes  Trismegistus," 
translated  by  Louis  Menard,  who  devoted  an 
authoritative  essay  to  the  text,  is  attributed  to 
Thoth,  the  Egyptian  Hermes,  and  reveals  some 
extremely  interesting  analogies  with  the  sacred 
books  of  India,  and  notably  with  the  "Bhagha- 
vat-Gita,"  demonstrating  once  again  the  uni- 
versal infiltration  of  the  great  primitive  reli- 
gion. But  chronologically  there  is  not  the 
slightest  doubt  that  the  birthplace  of  the  "Poi- 
mandres,"  "The  Asclepius,"  and  the  fragments 
of  the  "Sacred  Book,"  was  Alexandria.  The 
Hermetic  theology  is  full  of  Neoplatonic  and 
other  expressions  and  ideas,  borrowed  from 
Philo,  and  whose  passages  of  the  "Poimandres" 
may  be  compared  with  the  Revelation  of  St. 
John,  which  they  actually  echo,  proving  that 
the  two  works  were  written  at  periods  by  no 
means  distant  from  one  another.  It  is  there- 
fore not  surprising  that  as  far  as  the  religion 
of  ancient  Egypt  is  concerned  they  have  no 
more  to  teach  us  than  had  lamblichus,  since  at 
the  period  when  the  Greeks  investigated  it  the 
195 


The  Great  Secret 

symbolism  of  this  religion,  as  Louis  Menard 
has  observed,  was  already  a  dead  letter  to  its 
very  priests. 

As  for  the  "Tarot,"  it  is,  according  to  the 
occultists,  the  first  book  written  by  human  hand 
and  earlier  than  the  sacred  books  of  India, 
whence  it  is  supposed  to  have  made  its  way  into 
Egypt.  Unfortunately  no  trace  of  it  has  been 
discovered  in  the  archaeology  of  these  two  coun- 
tries. It  is  true  that  an  Italian  chronicle  in- 
forms us  that  the  first  card  game,  which  was 
merely  a  vulgarized  form  of  the  "Tarot,"  was 
imported  into  Viterbo  in  1379  by  the  Saracens, 
which  betrays  its  Oriental  origin.  At  all 
events,  in  its  present  form  it  does  not  go  back 
further  than  Jacquemin  Gringonneur,  an  illum- 
inator in  the  reign  of  Charles  VI. 

It  is  obvious  that  with  such  data  Eliphas 
Levi  could  not  have  any  very  important  revela- 
tions to  make  us.  He  was  moreover  embar- 
rassed by  the  ungrateful  and  impossible  task 
which  he  had  set  himself  in  endeavoring  to  rec- 
oncile occultism  with  Catholic  dogma.  But 
his  scholarship  in  his  own  province  is  remark- 
able; and  he  often  displays  amazing  intuition, 
in  which  he  seems  to  have  come  within  sight  of 
more  than  one  discovery  claimed  by  our  meta- 
psychists,  notably  in  anything  relating  to  me- 
diums, the  odic  fluid,  the  manifestations  of  the 
astral  body,  etc.  Further,  when  he  deals  with 
196 


The  Modern  Occultists 

a  subject  which  is  not  purely  chimerical  and 
is  connected  with  profound  realities — morality, 
for  example,  or  even  politics — and  when  he 
does  not,  as  so  many  occultists  do,  wrap  him- 
self up  in  wearisome  implications  which  seem 
afraid  of  saying  too  much,  though  in  reality 
they  betray  only  the  fear  of  having  nothing 
at  all  to  say,  he  sometimes  contrives  to  write 
admirable  passages,  which,  after  the  exagger- 
ated repute  which  they  used  to  enjoy,  do  not 
deserve  the  unjust  oblivion  to  which  they  are 
apparently  condemned  to-day. 

3 

Of  the  school  of  Eliphas  Levi,  and  following 
almost  the  same  track,  we  may  reckon  two  con- 
siderable writers;  Stanislas  de  Guaita  and  Dr. 
Encausse,  better  known  by  the  name  of  Papus. 
Theirs  is  a  rather  special  case.  Two  eminent 
scholars,  they  have  a  profound  knowledge  of 
cabalistic  and  Greco-Egyptian  literature,  and  all 
the  Hermetism  of  the  middle  ages.  They  are 
likewise  familiar  with  the  works  of  the  Orien- 
talists, the  Egyptologists,  and  the  theosophists 
and  the  purely  scientific  investigations  of  our 
occultists.  They  know  also  that  the  texts  upon 
which  they  rely  are  apocryphal  and  of  the 
most  doubtful  character;  and  although  they 
know  this,  and  from  time  to  time  proclaim  it, 
yet  they  start  from  these  texts  as  a  basis;  they 
197 


The  Great  Secret 

hold  fast  to  them;  they  confine  themselves  to 
them,  building  their  theories  upon  them,  as 
though  they  were  dealing  with  authentic  and 
unassailable  documents.  Thus  de  Guaita 
builds  up  the  most  important  part  of  his  work 
on  the  "Emerald  Table,"  an  apocryphal  work 
of  the  apocryphal  Trismegistus,  having  first  de- 
clared: "We  shall  not  quarrel  over  the  authen- 
ticity, authorship,  or  date  of  one  of  the  most 
authoritative  initiatory  documents  that  have 
been  handed  down  to  us  from  Greco-Egyptian 
antiquity. 

"Some  persist  in  seeing  in  it  merely  the  non- 
sensical work  of  some  Alexandrian  dreamer, 
while  others  claim  that  it  is  an  apocryphal  pro- 
duction of  the  fifth  century.  Some  insist 
that  it  is  four  thousand  years  older. 

"But  what  does  that  matter?  One  thing  is 
certain;  that  this  page  sums  up  the  traditions  of 
ancient  Egypt."  * 

It  is  not  by  any  means  certain,  seeing  that 
the  authentic  monuments  of  the  Egypt  of  the 
Pharaohs  offer  us  absolutely  nothing  to  con- 
firm this  mysterious  summary,  and  the  writer's 
"What  does  that  matter?"  is  rather  startling, 
referring  as  it  does  to  the  text  which  he  has 
made  the  keystone  of  his  doctrine. 

Papus,  for  his  part,  devotes  a  whole  volume 
of  commentary  to  the  "Tarot,"  in  which  he  sees 

1  Stanislas  de  Guaita,  La  Clef  de  la  Magie  Noire;  p.  119. 
198 


The  Modern  Occultists 

the  most  ancient  monument  of  esoteric  wisdom, 
although  he  knows  better  than  anybody  that 
no  authentic  traces  of  it  are  to  be  found  before 
the  fourteenth  century. 

In  calling  attention  to  this  fantastic  fault  at 
the  base  of  their  work — and  it  naturally  has 
many  ramifications, — I  have  no  intention  of 
questioning  the  integrity,  the  evident  good 
faith  of  this  extremely  interesting  work,  which 
is  full  of  original  views,  of  ingenious  intuitions, 
hypotheses,  interpretations,  and  comparisons, 
of  careful  research  and  interesting  discoveries. 
Both  writers  know  many  things  which  have 
been  forgotten  or  neglected  but  which  it  is 
well  sometimes  to  recall,  and  if  Papus  too  of- 
ten works  hastily  and  carelessly,  de  Guaita  is 
always  mindful,  almost  to  excess,  of  his  care- 
ful, dignified,  polished,  and  rather  formal 
phrasing. 


4 

The  position  of  the  new  theosophists  is  to 
some  extent  analogous  with  that  of  the  three 
occultists  of  whom  I  have  just  been  speaking. 
We  know  that  the  Theosophical  Society  was 
founded  in  1875  by  Madame  Blavatzky.  I 
need  not  here  pass  judgment  on  this  enigmat- 
ical woman  from  the  ethical  point  of  view.  It 
is  undoubtedly  the  fact  that  the  report  of  Dr. 
199 


The  Great  Secret 

Hodgson,  who  was  sent  out  to  India  in  1884 
by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research  especially 
to  conduct  an  inquiry  into  her  case,  reveals  her 
in  a  somewhat  unfavorable  light.  Neverthe- 
less, after  considering  the  documentary  evi- 
dence, I  must  admit  that  it  is  after  all  quite 
possible  that  the  highly  respectable  Dr.  Hodg- 
son may  himself  have  been  the  victim  of  trick- 
ery more  diabolical  than  that  which  he  be- 
lieved himself  to  have  unmasked.  I  know 
that  extensive  plagiarism  has  been  im- 
puted to  Madame  Blavatzky  and  other 
theosophists ;  in  particular  it  is  claimed  that 
Sinners  "Esoteric  Buddhism"  and  "The 
Secret  Doctrine"  are  the  work  of  one  Palma, 
whose  manuscripts  are  supposed  to  have  been 
bought  by  the  founders  of  the  Theosophical 
Society,  that  they  contain  unacknowledged  pas- 
sages, barely  disguised,  from  works  which  had 
appeared  twenty  years  earlier  over  the  signa- 
ture of  various  European  occultists,  and  nota- 
bly that  of  Louis  Lucas. 

I  shall  not  linger  over  these  questions,  for 
they  seem  to  me  far  less  important  than  that 
of  the  secret  and  prehistoric  documents  and  eso- 
teric commentaries  upon  which  the  whole  theo- 
sophical  revelation  is  founded.  Whoever  the 
author  or  authors  may  be,  I  shall  consider  their 
work  as  it  is  presented.  "Isis  Unveiled,"  "The 
Secret  Doctrine,"  and  the  rest  of  Madame  Bla- 
200 


The  Modern  Occultists 

vatzky's  very  numerous  works  form  a  stupen- 
dous and  ill-balanced  monument,  or  rather  a 
sort  of  colossal  builder's  yard,  into  which  the 
highest  wisdom,  the  widest  and  most  excep- 
tional scholarship,  the  most  dubious  odds  and 
ends  of  science,  legend  and  history,  the  most 
impressive  and  most  unfounded  hypotheses,  the 
most  precise  and  most  improbable  statements 
of  fact,  the  most  plausible  and  most  chimerical 
ideas,  the  noblest  dreams,  and  the  most  inco- 
herent fancies  are  poured  pell-mell  by  inex- 
haustible truck-loads.  There  is  in  this  accu- 
mulation of  materials  a  considerable  amount  of 
waste  and  fantastic  assertions  which  one  re- 
jects a  priori;  but  it  must  be  admitted,  if  we  in- 
tend to  be  impartial,  that  we  also  find  there 
speculations  which  must  rank  with  the  most 
impressive  ever  conceived.  Their  basis  is  evi- 
dently Vedic,  or  rather  Brahman  and  Vedan- 
tic,  and  is  to  be  found  in  texts  that  have  noth- 
ing occult  about  them.  But  upon  the  texts  of 
the  official  Indianists  the  Theosophists  have 
superimposed  others,  which  they  claim  are 
purer  and  much  more  ancient,  and  which  were 
provided  and  expounded  by  Hindu  adepts,  the 
direct  inheritors  of  the  immemorial  and  secret 
wisdom.  It  is  certainly  a  fact  that  their  writ- 
ings, without  revealing  anything  new  as  regards 
the  essential  points  of  that  great  confession  of 
ignorance  which  bounds  the  horizon  of  the 
201 


The  Great  Secret 

ancient  religions,  none  the  less  provide  us  with 
a  host  of  explanations,  commentaries,  theories, 
and  details  which  would  be  extremely  interesting 
if  only  they  had  been  subjected,  before  they 
were  offered  to  us,  to  a  historical  and  philolog- 
ical criticism  as  strict  as  that  to  which  those 
Indianists  who  do  not  profess  to  be  initiates 
have  subjected  their  documents.  Unfortu- 
nately this  is  not  the  case.  Let  us  take,  for 
example,  the  "Book  of  Dzyan";  that  is,  the 
mysterious  slocas  or  stanzas  which  form  the 
basis  of  the  whole  secret  doctrine  taught  by 
Madame  Blavatsky.  It  is  represented  as  be- 
ing "an  archaic  manuscript,  a  collection  of  split 
palm-leaves,  rendered,  by  some  unknown  pro- 
cess, invulnerable  to  water,  air,  or  fire,  and 
written  in  a  lost  language,  in  Sinzar,  earlier 
than  Sanskrit,  and  understood  only  by  a  few 
Hindu  adepts" —  and  that  is  all.  Not  a  word 
to  tell  us  where  this  manuscript  comes  from; 
how  it  has  been  miraculously  preserved;  what 
Sinzar  is;  to  which  of  the  hundred  languages, 
which  of  the  five  or  six  hundred  Hindu  dialects, 
it  is  related;  how  it  is  written;  how  it  can  still 
be  understood  and  translated;  what  is  approxi- 
mately the  period  from  which  it  dates,  etc.  No 
attention  has  been  paid  to  these  details.  It  is 
always  so.  One  must  believe  a  bare  statement, 
without  investigation.  These  methods  are  ob- 
viously deplorable,  for  if  the  texts  in  question 
202 


The  Modern  Occultists 

had  been  sifted  by  an  adequate  process  of  criti- 
cism they  would  be  among  the  most  interesting 
in  Asiatic  literature.  Such  as  they  are  offered 
to  us,  the  Cosmogony  and  the  anthropogenesis 
of  the  "Book  of  Dzyan"  appear  to  be  the  spec- 
ulations of  Brahmans  and  might  form  part  of 
the  "Upanishads."  An  ingenious  commentary 
accompanies  them,  the  work  of  adepts  abso- 
lutely familiar  with  the  progress  of  Western 
knowledge.  If  they  are  really  authentic  pre- 
historic documents,  their  statements  as  to  the 
evolution  of  the  worlds  and  of  man,  partly  con- 
firmed as  they  are  by  our  latest  discoveries  and 
scientific  theories,  are  truly  sensational.  If 
they  are  not  what  they  profess  to  be,  their  as- 
sertions are  mere  hypotheses,  still  impressive 
and  sometimes  plausible,  but  usually  incredible 
and  needlessly  complicated,  and,  in  any  case, 
arbitrary  and  chimerical. 

5 

This  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  "The  Se- 
cret Doctrine"  is  a  sort  of  stupendous  encyclo- 
pedia of  esoteric  knowledge,  above  all  as  re- 
gards its  appendices,  its  commentaries,  its  par- 
erga,  in  which  we  shall  find  a  host  of  ingenious 
and  interesting  comparisons  between  the  teach- 
ings and  the  manifestations  of  occultism 
throughout  the  centuries  and  in  different  coun- 
tries. Sometimes  there  flashes  from  it  an  un- 
203 


The  Great  Secret 

expected  light  whose  far-spreading  rays  illumi- 
nate regions  of  thought  which  are  rarely  fre- 
quented to-day.  In  any  case,  the  work  would 
prove  once  again,  if  proof  were  needed,  and 
with  unexampled  lucidity,  the  common  origin 
of  the  conceptions  which  were  formed  by  the 
human  race,  long  before  history  as  we  know  it, 
of  the  great  mysteries  which  encompassed  it. 
We  also  find  in  it  some  excellent  and  compre- 
hensive tabulations  in  which  occult  knowledge 
is  confronted  by  modern  science  and  often 
seems,  as  we  must  admit,  to  outstrip  or  excel 
the  latter.  Many  other  things,  too,  we  find  in 
it,  thrown  together  at  random,  but  by  no  means 
deserving  the  contempt  with  which  we  have  for 
some  time  professed  to  regard  them. 

However,  it  is  not  for  me  to  write  the  his- 
tory of  theosophy,  or  to  judge  it.  I  have 
simply  noted  it  in  passing,  since  it  is  the  penulti- 
mate form  of  occultism.  It  will  suffice  to  add 
that  the  defects  of  its  original  method  have 
been  emphasized  and  aggravated  by  Madame 
Blavatzky's  successors.  With  Mrs.  Annie  Be- 
sant — a  remarkable  woman  in  other  respects — 
and  with  Leadbeater,  everything  is  in  the  air; 
they  build  only  in  the  clouds,  and  their  gratui- 
tous assertions,  incapable  of  proof,  seem  to 
rain  down  thicker  and  thicker  on  every  page. 
Moreover,  they  seem  to  be  leading  theosophy 
204 


The  Modern  Occultists 

into  the  paths  along  which  their  early  converts 
hesitate  to  follow  them. 

These  defects  are  especially  aggravated  and 
revealed  in  all  their  ingenuousness  by  certain 
writers  of  the  second  ranks,  less  skilful  than 
their  masters  in  concealing  them;  for  example, 
in  the  work  of  Scott-Elliot,  the  historian  of 
"Atlantis"  and  "The  Lost  Lemuria."  Scott- 
Elliot  begins  his  history  of  Atlantis  in  the  most 
rational  and  scientific  manner.  He  refers  to 
historical  texts  which  scarcely  permit  us  to 
doubt  that  a  vast  island,  one  of  whose  extremi- 
ties lay  not  far  from  the  Pillars  of  Hercules, 
sank  into  the  ocean  and  was  lost  forever,  carry- 
ing with  it  the  wonderful  civilization  of  which 
it  was  the  home.  He  corroborates  these  texts 
by  carefully  chosen  proofs  derived  from  sub- 
marine orography,  geology,  chorography,  the 
persistence  of  the  Sargasso  Sea,  etc.  Then 
suddenly,  almost  without  warning,  referring  to 
occult  documents,  to  charts  drawn  on  baked 
clay  and  miraculously  recovered,  to  revelations 
of  unknown  origin,  and  to  astral  negatives 
which  he  claims  were  obtained  in  despite  of 
time  and  space,  and  discusses  as  though  they 
were  on  the  same  footing  as  historical  and  geo- 
graphical evidence,  he  describes  for  us,  in  all 
particulars,  as  though  he  were  living  in  their 
midst,  the  cities,  temples,  and  palaces  of  the 
205 


The  Great  Secret 

Atlanteans  and  the  whole  of  their  political, 
moral,  religious,  and  scientific  civilization,  in- 
cluding in  his  book  a  series  of  detailed  maps  of 
fabulous  continents — Hyperborean,  Lemurian, 
etc. — which  disappeared  800,000  or  200,000 
or  60,000  years  ago,  and  are  here  outlined 
with  as  much  minuteness  and  assurance  as 
though  the  draftsman  were  dealing  with  the 
contemporary  geography  of  Brittany  or  Nor- 
mandy. 

6 

The  head  of  an  independent  or  dissident 
branch  of  theosophy,  a  scholar,  a  philosopher, 
and  a  most  interesting  visionary,  of  whom  I 
have  already  spoken — Rudolph  Steiner, — em- 
ploys almost  the  same  methods;  but  he  does 
at  least  attempt  to  explain  them  and  justify 
them. 

Unlike  the  orthodox  theosophists,  he  is  by 
no  means  content  with  revealing,  discussing, 
and  interpreting  the  secret  and  sacred  books  of 
the  Oriental  tradition ;  he  is  able  to  find  in  him- 
self all  the  truths  contained  in  these  books. 
"It  is  in  the  soul,"  he  declares,  "that  the  mean- 
ing of  the  universe  is  revealed."  The  secret 
of  all  things  is  within  us,  since  everything  is 
within  us,  and  it  is  as  much  in  us  as  it  was  in 
Christ.  "The  Logos,  in  unceasing  evolution, 
in  millions  of  human  personalities,  was  diverted 
206 


The  Modern  Occultists 

to  and  concentered  by  the  Christian  conception 
in  the  unique  personality  of  Jesus.  The  di- 
vine energy  dispersed  throughout  the  world 
was  gathered  together  in  a  single  individual. 
According  to  this  conception  Jesus  is  the  only 
man  to  become  God.  He  takes  upon  himself 
the  deification  of  all  humanity.  We  seek  in 
Him  what  we  had  previously  sought  in  our  own 
souls."  1 

This  search,  too  long  interrupted  by  the  sym- 
bol of  Christ,  must  be  resumed.  This  idea, 
quite  defensible  if  we  regard  it  as  the  search 
for  the  "transcendental  ego,"  of  which  the  sub- 
consciousness  of  our  metapsychists  is  merely 
the  most  accessible  portion,  becomes  much  more 
debatable  in  the  developments  which  our  au- 
thor attributes  to  it.  He  professes  to  reveal 
to  us  the  means  of  awakening,  infallibly  and 
almost  mechanically,  the  God  that  slumbers 
within  us.  According  to  him,  "the  difference 
between  the  Oriental  initiation  and  the  Occi- 
dental lies  in  this,  that  the  first  is  effected  in 
the  sleeping  state  and  the  second  in  the  waking 
state.  Consequently  the  separation  of  the 
etheric  body  from  the  physical  body,  always 
dangerous,  is  avoided."  To  obtain  a  state  of 
trance  which  enables  the  initiate  to  communi- 
cate with  higher  worlds,  or  with  all  the  worlds 

1  Rudolph  Steiner.   Le  Mystere   Chretien   et  les  Mysteres 
Antiques,  Trans.  Edouard  Schure;  p.  228. 
2O7 


The  Great  Secret 

dispersed  through  space  and  time,  and  even 
with  the  divinity,  he  must,  by  means  of  spiritual 
exercises,  methodically  cultivate  and  develop 
certain  organs  of  the  astral  body  by  which  we 
see  and  hear,  in  men  and  in  things,  entities  that 
never  appear  on  the  physical  plane.  The  prin- 
ciples of  these  exercises,  at  least  as  regards 
their  spiritual  portions,  are  evidently  borrowed 
from  the  immemorial  practices  of  the  Hindu 
Yoga,  and  in  particular  from  the  "Sutra  of 
Patanjali."  Thus  Steiner  tells  us  that  the  as- 
tral organ  which  is  supposed  to  lie  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  larynx  enables  us  to  see  the 
thoughts  of  other  men  and  to  throw  a  search- 
ing glance  into  the  true  laws  of  natural  pheno- 
mena. Similarly  an  organ  supposed  to  lie  near 
the  heart  is  said  to  be  the  instrument  which 
serves  to  inform  us  of  the  mental  states  of 
others.  Whosoever  has  developed  this  will  be 
enabled  to  verify  the  existence  of  certain  deep- 
seated  energies  in  plants  and  animals.  In  the 
same  way  the  sense  supposed  to  have  its  seat 
in  the  pit  of  the  stomach  is  said  to  perceive  the 
faculties  and  talents  of  men  and  also  to  detect 
the  part  which  animals,  vegetables,  stones, 
metals,  and  atmospheric  phenomena  play  in  the 
economy  of  nature.  All  this  he  explains  mi- 
nutely at  great  length,  with  all  that  relates  to 
the  development,  training,  and  organization  of 
the  etheric  body,  and  the  vision  of  the  Higher 
208 


The  Modern  Occultists 

Self,  in  a  volume  entitled  "Initiation,  or  the 
Knowledge  of  the  Higher  World."  1 

When  we  read  this  dissertation  on  the  state 
of  trance,  which  is,  by  the  way,  a  remarkable 
work  from  more  than  one  point  of  view,  we  are 
tempted  to  ask  whether  the  author  has  suc- 
ceeded in  avoiding  the  danger  against  which  he 
warns  his  disciples:  whether  he  has  not  found 
himself  "in  a  world  created  in  every  detail  by 
his  own  imagination."  Moreover,  I  do  not 
know  whether  experiment  confirms  his  asser- 
tions. It  is  possible  to  test  them.  His  meth- 
ods are  simple  enough,  and,  unlike  those  of 
the  Yoga,  perfectly  inoffensive.  But  the  spirit- 
ual training  must  take  place  under  the  direc- 
tion of  a  master,  who  is  not  always  easy  to  find. 
In  any  case,  it  is  permissible  to  conceive  of  a 
sort  of  "secondary  state,"  possessing  advan- 
tages over  that  of  the  hypnotic  subject  or  the 
somnambulist  or  the  medium,  which  would  be 
productive  of  visions  or  intuitions  very  different 
from  those  afforded  us  by  our  senses  or  our 
intelligence  in  their  normal  state.  As  for 
knowing  whether  these  visions  or  intuitions  cor- 
respond with  realities  on  another  plane  or  in 
other  worlds,  this  is  a  question  which  can  be 
dealt  with  only  by  those  who  have  experienced 
them.  Most  of  the  great  mystics  have  had 

1  Rudolph   Steiner,  L 'Initiation,  Trans.  Jules   Sauerwein; 
pp.  188  et  seq. 

209 


The  Great  Secret 

visions  or  intuitions  of  this  kind  spontaneously; 
but  they  do  not  possess  any  real  interest  unless 
it  can  be  proved  that  they  are  experienced  by 
mystics  who  are  truly  and  absolutely  illiterate. 
Such,  it  is  maintained,  were  Jacob  Boehme,  the 
cobbler  theosophist  of  Goerlitz,  and  Ruys- 
broeck  I'Admirable,  the  old  Flemish  monk  who 
lived  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries. 
If  their  revelations  really  contain  no  uncon- 
scious reminiscences  of  what  they  have  read, 
we  find  in  them  so  many  analogies  with  the 
teaching,  which  later  become  esoteric,  of  the 
great  primitive  religions,  that  we  should  be 
compelled  to  believe  that  at  the  very  roots 
of  humanity,  or  at  its  topmost  height,  this 
teaching  exists,  identical,  latent,  and  unchange- 
able, corresponding  with  some  objective  and 
universal  truth.  We  find,  notably,  in  Ruys- 
broeck's  "Ornament  of  the  Spiritual  Es- 
pousals," in  his  "Book  of  the  Supreme  Truth," 
and  his  "Book  of  the  Kingdom  of  Lovers," 
whole  pages  which,  if  we  suppress  the  Christian 
phraseology,  might  have  been  written  by  an  an- 
chorite of  the  early  Brahmanic  period  or  a 
Neoplatonist  of  Alexandria.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  fundamental  idea  of  Boehme's  work 
is  the  Neoplatonic  conception  of  an  unconscious 
divinity,  or  a  divine  "nothingness,"  which  grad- 
ually becomes  conscious  by  objectifying  itself 
and  realizing  its  latent  virtualities.  But 

310 


The  Modern  Occultists 

Boehme,  as  we  have  seen,  was  by  no  means  an 
illiterate.  As  for  Ruysbroeck,  although  his 
work  is  written  in  the  Flemish  patois  which  is 
still  spoken  by  the  peasantry  of  Brabant  and 
Flanders,  we  must  not  forget  that  before  he 
became  a  hermit  in  the  forest  of  Soignes  he 
had  been  a  vicar  in  Brussels  and  had  lived  in 
the  mystical  atmosphere  created,  in  the  thir- 
teenth and  fourteenth  centuries,  by  Albert  the 
Great,  especially  by  his  contemporaries,  Johann 
Eckhart,  whose  mystical  pantheism  is  analogous 
with  that  of  the  Alexandrian  philosophers,  and 
Jean  Tauler,  who,  according  to  Surius,  the 
translator  and  biographer  of  Ruysbroeck, 
visited  the  latter  in  his  solitude  at  Groenendael. 
Now,  Jean  Tauler  likewise  spoke  of  the  union 
of  the  soul  with  the  divine  and  the  creation 
of  God  within  the  soul.  It  will  therefore  be 
evident  that  it  is  more  than  a  little  risky  to 
assert  that  his  visions  were  perfectly  sponta- 
neous. 

7 

As  for  Steiner,  in  his  case  the  question  does 
not  arise.  Before  he  found  or  thought  to  find 
in  himself  the  esoteric  truths  which  he  revealed, 
he  was  perfectly  familiar  with  all  the  literature 
of  mysticism,  so  that  his  visions  were  provided 
merely  by  the  ebb  and  flow  of  his  conscious 
or  subconscious  memory.  After  all,  he  scarcely 


The  Great  Secret 

differs  from  the  orthodox  theosophists,  except 
upon  one  point,  which  may  appear  more  or  less 
essential;  instead  of  making,  not  Buddha,  but 
Buddhas — that  is,  a  succession  of  revealers  or 
intermediaries — the  centers  of  spiritual  evolu- 
tion, he  attributes  the  leading  part  in  this  evo- 
lution to  Christ,  synthesizing  in  Him  all  the 
divinity  distributed  among  men,  thus  making 
Him  the  supreme  symbol  of  humanity  seeking 
the  God  Who  slumbers  in  its  soul.  This  is 
a  defensible  opinion  if  we  regard  it,  as  he  ap- 
pears to  do,  from  the  allegorical  standpoint, 
but  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  maintain  it 
from  the  historical  point  of  view. 

Steiner  applied  his  intuitive  methods,  which 
amount  to  a  species  of  transcendental  psychom- 
etry,  to  reconstituting  the  history  of  Atlantis 
and  revealing  to  us  what  is  happening  in  the 
sun,  the  moon,  and  the  other  planets.  He  de- 
scribes the  successive  transformations  of  the 
entities  which  will  become  men,  and  he  does 
so  with  such  assurance  that  we  ask  ourselves, 
having  followed  him  with  interest  through  pre- 
liminaries which  denote  an  extremely  well- 
balanced,  logical,  and  comprehensive  mind, 
whether  he  has  suddenly  gone  mad,  or  if  we  are 
dealing  with  a  hoaxer  or  with  a  genuine  clair- 
voyant. Doubtfully  we  remind  ourselves  that 
the  subconsciousness,  which  has  already  sur- 
prised us  so  often,  may  perhaps  have  in  store 
212 


The  Modern  Occultists 

for  us  yet  further  surprises  which  may  be  as 
fantastic  as  those  of  the  Austrian  theosophist; 
and,  having  learned  prudence  from  experience, 
we  refrain  from  condemning  him  without  ap- 
peal. 

When  all  is  taken  into  account  we  realize 
once  more,  as  we  lay  his  works  aside,  what  we 
realized  after  reading  most  of  the  other  mys- 
tics; that  what  he  calls  uthe  great  drama  of  the 
knowledge  which  the  ancients  used  to  perform 
and  to  live  in  their  temples,"  of  which  the  life, 
death,  and  resurrection  of  Christ,  as  of  Osiris 
and  Krishna,  is  only  a  symbolic  interpretation, 
should  rather  be  called  the  great  drama  of 
essential  and  invincible  ignorance. 


213 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   METAPSYCHISTS 


WE  come  now  to  the  occultists  of  to-day, 
who  are  no  longer  hierophants,  adepts, 
initiates,  or  seers,  but  mere  investigators  ap- 
plying to  the  study  of  abnormal  phenomena 
the  methods  of  experimental  science.  These 
phenomena  may  be  noted  on  every  hand  by 
any  one  who  displays  a  little  vigilance.  Are 
they  exclusively  due  to  the  unknown  powers 
of  the  subconsciousness,  or  to  invisible  entities 
which  are  not,  are  not  yet,  or  are  no  longer 
human?  Herein  resides  the  great  interest, 
one  might  say  the  whole  interest,  of  the  prob- 
lem; but  the  solution  is  still  uncertain,  although 
the  tendency  to  look  for  it  in  another  world 
than  ours  is  becoming  more  marked;  and  the 
conversion  to  spiritualism  of  scientists  pure  and 
simple,  such  as  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  or,  more 
recently,  Professor  W.  J.  Crawford,  is  not  with- 
out significance  in  this  respect. 

I  shall  not  return  in  these  pages  to  the  spirit 
messages,  the  phantasms  of  the  living  and  the 
214 


The  Metapsychists 

dead,  the  phenomena  of  premonition,  or  the 
psychometric  and  mediumistic  manifestations  of 
which  I  gave  a  brief  survey  in  "Death"  and 
"The  Unknown  Guest."  What  I  said  in  these 
volumes  will  give  the  reader  a  summary  and 
provisional — for  in  this  domain  all  is  provi- 
sional— yet  a  sufficient  idea  of  the  present  state 
of  metapsychical  knowledge  in  this  connection. 
There  are,  however,  other  factors,  which 
did  not  then  fall  within  the  scope  of  my  work, 
but  with  which  I  must  deal  to-day:  first,  be- 
cause having  surveyed,  quickly  but  as  completely 
as  is  possible  in  a  necessarily  brief  monograph, 
the  occultism  of  the  past,  it  is  only  fair  to 
treat  the  occultism  of  the  present  day  in  a  sim- 
ilar fashion;  but  also  and  especially  because 
the  points  which  I  then  passed  over  throw  a 
somewhat  unexpected  light  on  a  number  of 
other  factors,  and  justify  us,  if  not  in  forming 
conclusions,  at  least  in  drawing  certain  infer- 
ences which  will  complete  this  survey. 


Our  modern  occultists  no  longer  seek,  as 
did  their  more  presumptuous  predecessors,  to 
question  the  unknowable  directly,  to  go  back 
to  the  origin  of  the  Cause  without  a  cause,  to 
explain  the  inexplicable  transition  from  the 
infinite  to  the  finite,  from  the  unknowable  to 
the  known,  from  spirit  to  matter,  from  good 
215 


The  Great  Secret 

to  evil,  from  the  absolute  to  the  relative,  from 
the  eternal  to  the  ephemeral,  from  the  invisible 
to  the  visible,  from  immobility  to  movement, 
and  from  the  virtual  to  the  actual;  and  to  find 
in  all  these  incomprehensible  things  a  theogony, 
a  cosmogony,  a  religion,  and  a  morality  a  little 
less  hopeless  than  the  obscurity  whence  man 
has  striven  to  draw  them. 

Having  learned  wisdom  from  innumerable 
disappointments,  they  have  resigned  them- 
selves to  a  more  modest  function.  In  the 
heart  of  a  science  which  by  the  very  nature  of 
its  investigation  has  almost  inevitably  become 
materialistic,  they  have  patiently  conquered  a 
little  island  on  which  they  give  asylum  to  phe- 
nomena which  the  laws,  or  rather  the  habits  of 
matter,  as  we  believe  ourselves  to  know  them, 
are  not  sufficient  to  explain.  They  have  thus 
gradually  succeeded,  if  not  in  proving,  yet  in 
preparing  us  to  accept  the  proof,  that  there  is 
in  man,  whom  we  may  regard  as  a  sort  of  sum- 
mary of  the  universe,  a  spiritual  power  other 
than  that  which  proceeds  from  his  organs  or 
his  material  and  conscious  mind;  which  does 
not  entirely  depend  on  the  existence  of  his 
body.  We  must  admit  that  the  island  thus 
won  by  our  occultists,  who  are  now  assuming 
the  name  of  metapsychists,  is  as  yet  in  consid- 
erable disorder.  One  sees  upon  it  all  the  con- 
216 


The  Metapsychists 

fusion  of  a  recent  and  provisional  settlement. 
Thither  day  by  day  the  conquerors  bear  their 
discoveries,  great  or  small,  unloading  them  and 
heaping  them  pell-mell  upon  the  beach.  There 
the  doubtful  will  be  found  beside  the  indisput- 
able, the  excellent  by  the  worthless,  while  the 
beginning  is  confounded  with  the  end.  It 
would  seem  to  be  time  to  deduce,  from  this 
abundance  and  confusion  of  materials,  a  few 
general  laws  which  would  introduce  a  little  or- 
der into  their  midst;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether 
this  could  be  attempted  at  the  present  moment, 
for  the  inventory  is  not  yet  complete,  and  one 
feels  that  an  unexpected  discovery  may  call 
the  whole  position  in  question  and  upset  the 
most  carefully  constructed  theories. 

In  the  meanwhile  one  might  try  to  begin  at 
the  beginning.  Since  the  phenomena  recorded 
tend  to  prove  that  the  spiritual  power  which 
emanates  from  man  does  not  entirely  depend 
on  his  brain  and  his  bodily  life,  it  would  be 
logical  to  show,  in  the  first  place,  that  thought 
may  exist  without  a  brain,  and  did,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  exist  before  there  was  such  an  organ 
as  the  brain.  If  one  could  do  this,  then  sur- 
vival after  death  and  all  the  phenomena  attrib- 
uted to  the  subconsciousness  would  become  al- 
most natural  and,  at  all  events,  far  more  cap- 
able of  explanation. 

217 


The  Great  Secret 


3 

The  great  objection  which  the  materialists 
have  always  brought  against  the  spiritualists, 
and  which  they  still  advance,  though  to-day 
with  less  assurance  than  of  old,  may  be 
summed  up  in  these  words:  "No  thought  with- 
out a  brain."  The  mind  or  soul  is  a  secre- 
tion of  the  cerebral  tissues;  when  the  brain  dies 
thought  ceases,  and  nothing  is  left. 

To  this  formidable  objection,  to  these  state- 
ments, apparently  irrefutable,  since  our  daily 
experience  of  the  dead  is  continually  confirming 
them,  the  occultists  have  not  hitherto  been  able 
to  oppose  any  really  serious  argument. 

They  were,  at  bottom,  far  more  defenseless 
than  they,  dared  to  admit.  But  for  some  years 
now  the  investigations  of  our  metapsychists, 
from  which  we  have  not  as  yet  deduced  all  the 
consequences,  have  provided  us,  if  not  with 
unanswerable  arguments,  which  it  may  be  we 
shall  never  find,  at  least  with  the  raw  material 
which  will  enable  us  to  hold  our  own  against 
the  materialists;  no  longer  amid  the  clouds  of 
religion  or  metaphysics,  but  on  their  own  terri- 
tory, whose  sole  ruler  is  the  goddess — the 
highly  respectable  goddess — of  the  experimen- 
tal method.  Thus  above  the  centuries  we 
once  more  assemble  the  affirmations  and  decla- 
rations bequeathed  to  us  by  our  prehistoric  an- 
218 


The  Metapsychists 

cestors  as  a  secret  treasure,  or  one  too  long 
buried  in  oblivion. 

We  should  be  thankful  enough  to  avoid 
these  rather  useless  discussions  between  the 
spiritualists  and  the  materialists,  but  the  latter 
compel  us  to  return  to  them  by  blindly  main- 
taining that  matter  is  everything;  that  it  is  the 
source  of  everything;  that  everything  begins 
and  ends  in  matter  and  through  matter,  and 
that  nothing  else  exists.  It  would  be  more  rea- 
sonable to  admit  once  for  all  that  matter  and 
spirit  are  fundamentally  merely  two  different 
states  of  a  single  substance,  or  rather  of  the 
same  eternal  energy.  This  is  what  the  primi- 
tive religion  of  India  has  always  affirmed,  more 
definitely  than  any  other  cult,  adding  that  the 
spirit  was  the  primordial  state  of  this  substance 
or  energy,  and  that  matter  is  merely  the  re- 
sult of  a  manifestation,  a  condensation,  or  a 
degradation  of  spirit.  The  whole  of  its  cos- 
mogony, theosophy,  and  morality  proceed  from 
this  fundamental  principle,  whose  consequences, 
even  though  in  appearance  they  amount  to  no 
more  than  a  verbal  dispute,  are  in  actual  fact 
stupendous. 

Thus,  to  begin  with,  we  must  know  whether 
spirit  preceded  matter,  or  whether  the  reverse 
was  the  case;  whether  matter  is  a  state  of 
spirit,  or  whether,  on  the  contrary,  spirit  is 
a  state  of  matter.  In  the  present  condition  of 
219 


The  Great  Secret 

science,  disregarding  the  teaching  of  the  great 
religions,  is  it  possible  to  answer  this  question? 
Our  materialists  assert  that  life  is  the  indis- 
pensable condition  without  which  it  is  impossi- 
ble for  thought  to  rise  and  take  shape  in  the 
mind.  They  are  right;  but  what,  in  their  eyes, 
is  life,  if  not  a  manifestation  of  matter,  which 
already  is  no  longer  matter  as  we  understand 
it,  and  which  we  have  a  perfect  right  to  call 
spirit,  soul,  or  even  God,  if  we  so  desire?  If 
they  maintain  that  matter  is  powerless  to  pro- 
duce life  unless  a  germ  coming  from  without 
calls  it  into  existence,  they  ipso  facto  enter  our 
camp,  since  they  acknowledge  that  something 
more  than  matter  is  needed  to  produce  life. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  claim  that  life  is 
an  emanation  from  matter,  they  are  confessing 
that  it  was  previously  contained  in  matter,  and 
again  they  find  themselves  in  our  ranks.  For 
the  rest,  they  have  recently  been  compelled  to 
admit — see,  among  others,  the  experiments  of 
Dr.  Gustave  le  Bon — that  no  such  thing  exists 
as  inert  matter,  and  that  a  pebble,  a  lump  of 
lava,  sterilized  by  the  fiercest  of  infernal  fires, 
is  endowed  with  an  intramolecular  activity 
which  is  absolutely  fantastic,  expending,  in  its 
internal  vortices,  an  energy  which  would  be 
capable  of  hauling  whole  railway  trains  round 
and  round  the  globe.  Now  what  is  this  ac- 
tivity, this  energy,  if  not  an  undeniable  form 
220 


The  Metapsychists 

of  the  universal  life?  And  here  again  we  are 
in  agreement.  But  we  are  not  in  agreement 
when  they  claim,  without  reason,  or  rather 
against  all  reason,  that  matter  existed  before 
this  energy.  We  may  admit  that  it  has  existed 
simultaneously,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world;  but  mere  logic  and  observation  of  the 
facts  compel  us  to  admit  that  when  matter  sets 
itself  in  motion,  when  it  proceeds  to  evolve, 
not  internally,  as  in  a  pebble,  but  externally, 
as  in  a  crystal,  a  plant,  or  an  animal,  it  is 
precisely  the  energy,  the  motive-power  that 
was  contained  in  it,  that  has  now  determined 
this  movement  or  this  development.  This 
same  logic,  this  same  observation  of  the  facts, 
forces  us  yet  again  to  acknowledge  that  when 
matter  is  transformed  or  organized  it  is  not 
the  matter  that  begins  the  process,  but  the 
life  contained  in  it.  Now  in  this  case,  as  in 
the  disputes  that  are  settled  in  the  courts  of 
law,  it  is  extremely  important  to  know  which 
side  began.  If  it  was  matter  that  began — but 
let  us  ask,  in  passing,  how  it  could  begin,  how 
it  could  possibly  take  the  initiative,  without 
ceasing  to  be  matter  defined  by  the  material- 
ists; that  is,  a  thing  that  is  in  itself  necessarily 
lifeless  and  motionless — but  if,  after  all,  to 
admit  the  impossible,  it  was  matter  that  be- 
gan, it  is  probable  enough  our  spiritual  part 
will  perish,  or  rather  will  be  extinguished  with 
221 


The  Great  Secret 

matter,  and  will  revert,  contained  in  matter,  to 
that  elemental  intramolecular  activity  which 
marked  its  beginning  and  will  mark  its  end. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  spirit  that  be- 
gan, it  is  no  less  probable  that,  having  been 
able  to  transform  and  organize  matter,  it  is 
more  powerful  than  matter,  and  of  a  different 
nature;  and  that  having  been  able  to  make  use 
of  matter,  to  profit  by  it  in  the  process  of  evo- 
lution, improving  and  uplifting  itself — and  the 
evolution,  which,  upon  this  earth  of  ours,  began 
with  minerals  and  ends  in  man,  is  assuredly  a 
spiritual  evolution, — it  is,  I  repeat,  no  less  prob- 
able that  spirit,  having  shown  itself  able  to 
make  use  of  matter  and  being  its  master,  will 
refuse  to  allow  matter,  when  it  seems  on  the 
point  of  disintegration,  to  involve  it  in  its  mate- 
rial dissolution;  that  spirit  will  refuse  to  ac- 
cept extinction,  when  matter  becomes  extinct; 
nor  will  it  lapse  into  that  obscure  intramolec- 
ular activity  whence  it  drew  matter  in  the  be- 
ginning. 

4 

In  any  case,  the  question  for  us  has  a  pecu- 
liar interest — as  to  whether  thought  preceded 
the  brain,  or  whether  thought  is  possible  with- 
out a  brain — this  question  is  determined  by 
the  facts.  Before  the  appearance  of  man  and 
the  more  intelligent  of  the  animals,  nature  was 

222 


The  Metapsychists 

already  far  more  intelligent  than  we  'are  and 
had  already  brought  into  the  world  of  plants, 
fish,  lizards,  and  reptilian  birds,  and  above 
all  into  the  world  of  insects,  most  of  those 
marvelous  inventions  which  even  to-day  fill 
us  with  an  ecstasy  of  wonder.  Where  in  those 
days  was  the  mind  of  nature?  Probably  in 
matter,  and  above  all  outside  matter;  every- 
where and  nowhere,  just  as  it  is  to-day.  It 
is  useless  to  object  that  all  this  was  done  grad- 
ually, with  infinite  slowness,  by  means  of  in- 
cessant groping;  that  goes  without  saying,  but 
time  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter.  It 
is  therefore  obvious,  unless  you  believe  that  the 
effect  may  precede  the  cause,  that  there  was 
somewhere,  no  one  knows  where,  an  intelli- 
gence which  was  already  at  work,  although 
without  organs  that  could  be  seen  or  localized; 
thus  proving  that  the  organs  which  we  believe 
to  be  indispensable  to  the  existence  of  an  idea 
are  merely  the  products  of  a  preexisting  i-dea, 
the  results  of  a  previous  and  a  spiritual  cause. 

5 

In  the  meantime  it  is  quite  possible  that  since 
.the  formation  of  the  human  mind  nature 
thinks  better  than  of  old.  It  is  quite  possible, 
as  certain  biologists  have  claimed,  that  nature 
profits  by  our  mental  acquisitions,  which  are 
poured  into  the  common  fund  of  the  universal 
223 


The  Great  Secret 

mind.  For  my  part  I  see  no  objection  to  this, 
for  it  does  not  in  the  least  mean  that  nature 
depends  for  her  conceptions  on  the  human 
mind.  She  had  them  all  long  before  we 
existed.  When  man  invents,  say,  the  printing- 
press  or  the  typewriter  to  facilitate  the  diffu- 
sion of  his  ideas,  this  does  not  prove  that  he 
needed  either  invention  in  order  to  think. 

It  seems,  indeed,  that  nature,  at  least  on  our 
little  planet,  has  grown  wiser  and  no  longer 
permits  the  stupendous  blunders  of  which  she 
used  to  be  guilty,  in  creating  thousands 
of  anomalous  monsters  incapable  of  survival. 
None  the  less  it  is  true  that  she  did  not  await 
our  advent  before  proceeding  to  think,  before 
imagining  a  far  greater  profusion  of  things 
than  we  shall  ever  imagine.  We  have  not 
ceased,  nor  shall  we  soon  cease,  to  help  ourselves 
with  overflowing  hands  from  the  stupendous 
treasury  of  intelligence  accumulated  by  her  be- 
fore our  coming.  Earnest  Kapp,  in  his  Philos- 
ophie  de  la  Technique,  has  brilliantly  demon- 
strated that  all  our  inventions,  all  our  machin- 
ery, are  merely  organic  projections,  that  is,  un- 
conscious imitations,  of  models  provided  by 
nature.  Our  pumps  are  derived  from  the  ani- 
mal heart;  our  cranks  and  connecting-rods  are 
reproductions  of  our  joints  and  limbs;  our  cam- 
eras are  an  adaptation  of  the  human  eye;  our 
telegraphic  systems,  of  our  nervous  system;  in 
224 


The  Metapsychists 

the  X-rays  we  have  that  organic  property  of 
somnambulistic  clairvoyance  which  is  able  to 
see  through  opaque  substances ;  which  can  read, 
for  example,  the  contents  of  a  letter  that  has 
been  sealed  and  enclosed  in  a  threefold  metal 
box.  In  wireless  telegraphy  we  are  following 
the  hints  afforded  by  telepathy,  that  is,  the  di- 
rect communication  of  an  idea  by  means  of 
psychic  waves  analogous  to  the  Hertzian 
waves;  and  in  the  phenomena  of  levitation  and 
the  moving  of  objects  without  contact  we  have 
yet  another  indication  which  we  have  not  hith- 
erto been  able  to  turn  to  account.  It  puts  us 
upon  the  track  of  methods  which  will  perhaps 
one  day  enable  us  to  overcome  the  terrible 
laws  of  gravitation  which  chain  us  to  the  earth, 
for  it  seems  as  though  these  laws,  instead  of 
being,  as  was  supposed,  forever  incomprehen- 
sible and  impenetrable,  are  principally  mag- 
netic; that  is  to  say,  tractable  and  utilizable. 

6 

And  I  am  speaking  here  only  of  the  re- 
stricted world  of  man.  What  if  we  were  to 
enumerate  all  nature's  inventions  in  the  insect 
world,  where  she  seems  to  have  lavished,  long 
before  our  arrival  on  the  earth,  a  genius  more 
varied  and  more  abundant  than  that  which  she 
has  expended  upon  us?  Apart  from  the  con- 
ception of  political  and  social  organizations, 
225 


The  Great  Secret 

which  some  day  we  may  perhaps  imitate,  we 
find  in  the  world  of  insects  mechanical  miracles 
which  are  beyond  our  attainments  and  secret 
forces  of  which  we  have  as  yet  no  conception. 
Consider  the  Languedocian  scorpion:  whence 
does  she  draw  that  mysterious  aliment  which, 
despite  her  incessant  activity,  enables  her  to 
live  for  nine  months  without  any  sort  of  nour- 
ishment? Where,  again,  do  the  young  of  the 
Lycosa  of  the  Clotho  spider  obtain  their 
food,  They,  too,  possess  a  similar  capacity. 
And  by  virtue  of  what  alchemy  does  the  egg  of 
a  beetle,  the  Minotaurus  typhoeus,  increase  its 
volume  tenfold,  although  nothing  can  reach  it 
from  the  outside  world?  Fabre,  the  great 
entomologist,  without  a  suspicion  that  he  was 
repeating  a  fundamental  theory  of  Paracelsus — 
for  science,  despite  itself,  draws  daily  closer 
to  magic, — had  a  shrewd  suspicion  "that  they 
borrow  part  of  their  activity  from  the  energies 
encompassing  them — heat,  electricity,  light,  or 
other  various  modes  of  a  single  agent,"  which 
is  precisely  the  universal  or  astral  agent,  the 
cosmic,  etheric,  or  vital  fluid,  the  Akahsa  of 
the  occultists,  or  the  od  of  our  modern  theo- 
rists. 

7 

It  may  be  said,  in  passing,  that  mindless  na- 
ture has  once  more  plainly  shown  our  minds 
226 


The  Metapsychists 

the  path  to  follow  should  they  seek  to  rid  us 
of  the  burdensome  and  repugnant  dependence 
upon  food,  which  allows  us  barely  a  few  hours' 
leisure  between  the  three  or  four  meals  that  we 
are  obliged  to  consume  daily.  It  may  be  that 
the  time  is  less  remote  than  we  suppose  when 
we  shall  cease  to  be  greedy  stomachs  and  in- 
satiable bellies;  when  we  in  our  turn  shall  have 
solved  the  magnificent  secret  of  these  insects; 
when  we,  like  them,  shall  succeed  in  absorbing 
vitality  from  the  universal  and  invisible  fluid 
by  which  not  they  alone  but  we  ourselves  are 
surrounded  and  permeated. 

Here  is  a  field  that  to  our  human  science 
is  unexplored  and  unbounded.  Here,  above  all 
from  the  point  of  view  of  our  spiritual  life,  is 
a  transformation  which  would  singularly  facili- 
tate our  understanding  of  our  future  exist- 
ence ;  for  when  we  no  longer  have  to  make  the 
three  or  four  meals  which  now,  according  to 
temperament,  encumber  or  brighten  the  hours 
between  sunrise  and  sunset,  we  shall  perhaps 
begin  to  understand  that  our  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings will  not  necessarily  be  unhappy,  unoccupied, 
distracted,  and  a  prey  to  eternal  tedium  when 
our  day  no  longer  contains  the  landmarks  or 
objectives  now  furnished  by  breakfast,  lunch, 
tea,  and  dinner.  It  would  be  an  excellent  ini- 
tiation into  the  diet  which  will  be  ours  beyond 
the  tomb  and  in  eternity. 
227 


The  Great  Secret 

Returning  once  more  to  the  problem  of 
thought  without  a  brain,  which  is  the  key- 
stone of  the  whole  building:  let  us  suppose  that 
after  a  cataclysm,  such  as  the  earth  must  as- 
suredly have  experienced  already,  and  such  as 
may  at  any  moment  be  repeated,  every  living 
brain,  and  even  the  most  elementary,  the  most 
gelatinous  attempt  at  a  nervous  or  cerebral 
organization,  from  that  of  the  amoeba  to  that 
of  man,  were  suddenly  destroyed.  Do  you  be- 
lieve that  the  earth  would  remain  bare,  unin- 
habited, inert,  and  forever  lifeless,  if  the  con- 
ditions of  life  were  once  more  to  become  pre- 
cisely what  they  had  been  before  the  catastro- 
phe? Such  a  supposition  is  scarcely  permissi- 
ble. On  the  contrary,  it  is  all  but  certain  that 
life,  finding  itself  surrounded  by  the  same  fa- 
vorable circumstances,  would  begin  all  over 
again  in  almost  the  same  fashion.  Mind  would 
once  more  gradually  come  into  being;  ideas 
and  emotions  would  reappear,  would  make 
themselves  new  organs,  thereby  giving  us  irre- 
fragable proof  that  thought  was  not  dead,  that 
it  cannot  die,  that  somewhere  it  finds  a  refuge 
and  continues  to  exist,  intangible  and  imper- 
ishable, above  the  absolute  destruction  of  its 
instnuments  or  its  media ;  that  it  is,  in  a  word, 
independent  of  matter. 


228 


The  Metapsychists 

8 

Let  us  now  examine  this  preexistence  of  the 
mind  or  spirit  in  ourselves.  Had  we  already 
a  brain  when,  at  the  moment  of  our  concep- 
tion, we  were  still  no  more  than  the  sperm- 
cell  which  only  the  microscope  renders  visible 
to  the  eyes?  Yet  we  were  already  potentially 
all  that  we  are  to-day.  Not  only  were  we  our- 
selves, with  our  character,  our  innate  ideas,  our 
virtues  and  vices,  and  all  that  our  brain,  which 
as  yet  had  no  existence,  would  develop  a  great 
deal  later;  already  we  held  within  us  all  that 
our  ancestors  had  been;  we  bore  within  us 
all  that  they  had  acquired  during  a  tale  of 
centuries  whose  number  no  one  knows;  their 
experience,  their  wisdom,  their  habits,  their 
defects  and  qualities,  and  the  consequences  of 
their  imperfections  and  their  merits;  all  this 
was  packed,  struggling  and  fructifying,  into 
one  invisible  speck.  And  we  likewise  bore 
within  us  (which  seems  to  be  much  more  ex- 
traordinary, although  it  is  equally  indisputa- 
ble) the  whole  of  our  descendants;  the  whole 
unbroken  sequence  of  our  children  and  our  chil- 
dren's children,  in  whom  we  shall  live  again 
through  the  infinity  of  the  ages,  though  already 
we  hold  within  us  all  their  aptitudes,  all  their 
destinies,  all  their  future.  When  matter  ac- 
cumulates so  many  things  in  a  scrap  of  filament 
229 


The  Great  Secret 

so  fine  that  it  all  but  escapes  the  microscope, 
is  it  not  subtle  to  the  point  of  bearing  a  strange 
resemblance  to  a  spiritual  principle? 

We  shall  disregard  for  the  moment  the  ac- 
tion of  our  descendants  upon  ourselves,  our 
characters,  and  our  tendencies;  an  influence 
which  is  probable  enough,  since  they  do  incon- 
testably  exist  within  us,  but  which  it  would 
take  us  too  long  to  investigate:  and  let  us  for 
a  moment  lay  stress  upon  the  fact  that  our 
ancestors,  who  to  us  seemed  dead,  are  continu- 
ing in  a  very  real  sense  to  live  on  in  us.  I  shall 
not  linger  over  this  point,  since  I  wish  to  con- 
sider more  recent  arguments.  I  shall  therefore 
content  myself  with  calling  your  attention  to  it; 
for  the  phenomena  of  heredity  are  now  recog- 
nized and  classified.  It  is  an  indubitable  fact 
that  each  of  us  is  merely  a  sort  of  sum  total 
of  his  forebears,  reproducing  more  or  less 
exactly  the  personality  of  one  or  several  of 
them,  who  are  obviously  continuing  to  think 
and  act  in  him.  They  think  with  our  brains, 
you  will  say.  That  may  be  true.  They  employ 
the  organs  at  their  disposal;  but  it  is  evident 
that  they  still  exist;  that  they  live  and  think,  al- 
though they  have  no  brain  of  their  own;  and 
this  for  the  moment  is  all  that  we  need  estab- 
lish. 


230 


The  Metapsychists 


We  have  just  seen,  though  our  survey  was 
all  too  brief  and  too  summary,  that  it  is  pos- 
sible for  thought  to  exist  without  a  brain;  that 
it  seems  anterior  to  matter  and  actually  exists 
independent  of  matter.  For  the  moment  I 
shall  note  only  one  of  the  objections  put  for- 
ward by  the  materialists.  "If  thought  is  in- 
dependent of  matter,"  they  say,  "how  is  it  that 
it  ceases  to  function,  or  functions  only  in  an 
incomplete  manner,  when  the  brain  is  injured?" 
This  objection,  which,  by  the  way,  does  not  en- 
visage the  source  of  thought,  but  only  the  state 
of  its  conductor  or  condenser,  loses  some  part 
of  its  value  if  we  oppose  to  it  a  sufficient  number 
of  observations  which  prove  precisely  the  con- 
trary. I  could,  if  we  had  the  leisure,  place 
before  you  a  list  of  cases,  vouched  for  by  medi- 
cal observers,  in  which  thought  continued  to 
function  normally  though  the  whole  brain  al- 
most was  reduced  to  pulp  or  was  merely  a  puru- 
lent abscess.  I  refer  those  whom  this  ques- 
tion interests  to  the  works  of  the  specialists;  in 
particular  they  will  find  in  Dr.  Geley's  authori- 
tative volume;  De  I'Inconscient  au  Conscient, 1 
some  examples  which  will  convince  them. 

Fundamentally  the  objection  advanced  by  the 
materalists  is  a  sophism,  whicji  has  been  ad- 

1P.  8  et  seq. 

231 


The  Great  Secret 

mirably  refuted  by  Dr.  Carl  du  Prel.  To  say 
that  every  injury  to  the  brain  affects  the  mind, 
that  all  thought  ceases  when  the  brain  is  de- 
stroyed, and  that  the  mind  is  consequently  a 
product  of  the  brain,  is  to  argue  precisely  as 
who  should  say  that  any  injury  to  a  telegraphic 
apparatus  garbles  the  message;  that  if  the  wire 
is  cut  the  message  no  longer  exists;  therefore 
the  apparatus  produces  the  message,  and  no 
scientist  can  possibly  imagine  that  there  is  an 
operator  behind  the  apparatus. 

10 

We  shall  now  consider  the  statements  which 
the  scientists  have  been  collecting  during  the 
last  few  years,  collating,  over  a  dividing  space 
of  hundreds  and  thousands  of  years,  the  affir- 
mations of  the  ancient  religions  and  those  of 
the  occultists.  These  throw  a  new  light  on  the 
problem.  They  corroborate,  in  short,  by  ex- 
periment, the  esoteric  doctrines  in  respect  of 
the  astral  or  etheric  body — or  the  Unknown 
Guest,  if  you  prefer  it; — in  respect  of  its  ex- 
traordinary and  incomprehensible  faculties,  its 
probable  survival,  and  its  independence  of  our 
physical  body. 

We  all  knew  that  a  very  considerable  portion 
of  our  life,  of  our  personality,  lay  buried  in 
the  darkness  of  the  unconscious  or  the  sub- 
conscious. In  this  darkness  we  housed  the  whole 
232 


The  Metapsychists 

of  our  organic  life:  that  of  the  stomach,  the 
heart,  the  lungs,  the  kidneys,  and  even  the 
brain;  and  there  they  did  their  work,  in  an  ob- 
scurity never  pierced  by  a  ray  of  conscious- 
ness save  by  chance;  in  illness,  for  example. 
There,  too,  we  lodged  our  instincts,  the  lowest 
and  the  highest  alike;  with  all  that  was  mysteri- 
ous, innate  and  irresistible  in  our  knowledge, 
our  aspirations,  our  tastes,  our  capacities,  our 
temperaments,  and  many  other  things  which  we 
have  no  time  to  examine. 

But  for  some  years  now  the  scientific  investi- 
gation of  hypnotism  and  mediumship  has  enor- 
mously enlarged  and  illuminated  this  extraor- 
dinary and  magical  domain  of  the  unconscious. 

We  have  come,  step  by  step,  to  establish 
the  fact,  in  an  objective,  material  and  indubita- 
ble fashion,  that  our  little  conscious  cerebral 
life  is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  vast  ultra- 
cerebral  and  secret  life  which  we  live  simulta- 
neously; for  this  unknown  life  contains  the  past 
and  the  future,  and  even  in  the  present  can 
project  itself  to  enormous  distances  from  our 
physical  body.  In  particular  we  have  ascer- 
tained that  the  restricted,  unreliable,  and  un- 
stable memory  which  we  thought  unique  is 
duplicated  in  the  darkness  by  another  memory 
which  is  unrestricted,  indefatigable,  inexhaus- 
tible, incorruptible,  unshakable,  and  infallible, 
recording  somewhere,  perhaps  in  the  brain,  but 
233 


in  any  case  not  in  the  brain  as  we  know  it  and 
as  it  controls  our  consciousness — for  it  seems 
to  be  independent  of  the  condition  of  this 
brain, — recording  indelibly  the  most  trivial 
events,  the  slightest  emotions,  the  most  fugi- 
tive thoughts  of  our  lives.  Thus,  to  cite  only 
one  example  from  among  a  thousand,  a  ser- 
vant who  was  absolutely  illiterate  was  able,  in 
the  hypnotic  state,  to  repeat  without  a  mis- 
take whole  pages  of  Sanskrit,  having  some 
years  earlier  heard  her  first  employer,  who  was 
an  Orientalist,  reading  passages  from  the  "Ve- 
das." 

It  has  thus  been  proved  that  every  chapter 
of  every  one  of  the  thousands  of  books  that 
we  have  read  remains  indelibly  photographed 
on  the  tablets  of  our  memory  and  may,  at  a 
given  moment,  reappear  before  our  eyes  with- 
out the  loss  of  a  period  or  a  comma.  Thus 
again  Colonel  de  Rochas,  in  his  experiments  on 
the  retrogression  of  the  memory  and  the  per- 
sonality, made  his  subjects  go  back  over  the 
whole  course  of  their  lives,  down  to  their  very 
early  childhood,  whose  least  details  were  re- 
suscitated with  an  extraordinary  distinctness 
and  perspective ;  details  which,  when  they  were 
verified,  were  acknowledged  to  be  absolutely 
correct.  He  did  even  better  than  this:  he  suc- 
ceeded in  arousing  the  memory  of  their  pre- 
vious lives.  But  here,  verification  being  more 
234 


The  Metapsychists 

difficult,  his  experiments  are  hardly  to  the  point; 
and  I  wish  to  lead  you  only  on  to  the  firm 
ground  of  established  and  undisputed  facts. 

ii 

Well,  then,  here  is  an  enormous  part  of  our- 
selves which  escapes  us;  of  whose  life  we  know 
nothing;  of  which  we  make  no  use;  which  lives 
and  records  and  acts  outside  our  conscious 
minds;  an  ideal  memory,  which  is,  practically 
speaking,  of  no  use  to  us;  by  the  side  of  which 
the  memory  that  obeys  us  is  no  more  than  a 
restricted  summit,  a  sort  of  pinnacle,  inces- 
santly abraded  by  time,  emerging  from  the 
ocean  of  oblivion,  beneath  which  spreads  away, 
downward  and  outward,  a  huge  mountain  of 
unchangeable  memories,  by  which  the  brain  is 
unable  to  profit.  Now  on  what  do  we  base  our 
personality,  the  nature  of  our  ego,  the  identity 
which  above  all  things  we  fear  to  lose  by 
death?  Entirely  on  our  conscious  memory, 
for  we  know  no  other;  and  this  memory,  com- 
pared with  the  other,  is,  as  we  have  seen,  pre- 
carious and  insignificant.  Is  it  not  time  to 
ask  ourselves  where  our  ego  really  exists,  where 
our  true  personality  resides?  Is  it  in  the  re- 
stricted, uncertain,  precarious  memory  or  in 
the  spacious,  infallible,  and  unshakable  one? 
Which  self  should  we  choose  after  death? 
That  which  consists  only  of  hesitating  reminis- 
235 


The  Great  Secret 

cences,  or  the  other,  which  represents  the 
whole  man,  with  no  solution  of  continuity; 
which  has  not  let  slip  a  single  action  or  spec- 
tacle or  sensation  of  our  lifetime,  and  retains, 
living  within  it,  the  self  of  all  those  who  have 
died  before  us?  While  there  is  reason  to  fear 
that  the  first  memory,  that  of  which  our  brain 
makes  use,  is  impaired  or  extinguished  at  the 
moment  of  death,  just  as  it  is  impaired  or  di- 
minished by  the  least  ill-health  during  life,  is  it 
not,  on  the  other  hand,  more  probable  that  the 
other  more  capacious  memory,  which  no  shock, 
no  sickness  can  confuse,  will  resist  the  terrific 
shock  of  death;  and  is  there  not  a  very  good 
chance  that  we  shall  find  it  intact  beyond  the 
grave? 

If  this  is  not  so,  why  this  stupendous  work 
of  registration,  this  incredible  accumulation  of 
unused  photographs — for  in  ordinary  life  we 
never  even  wipe  the  dust  from  them — when 
the  few  landmarks  of  our  cerebral  memory  are 
enough  to  maintain  the  essential  outlines  of  our 
identity?  It  is  admitted  that  nature  has  made 
nothing  useless;  we  must  therefore  suppose 
that  these  pictures  will  be  of  use  later  on,  that 
elsewhere  they  will  be  necessary;  and  where 
can  this  elsewhere  be,  save  in  another  life? 

The  inevitable  objection  will  be  made  that 
it  is  the  brain  alone  which  registers  the  images 
and  phrases  of  this  memory,  just  as  it  registers 
236 


The  Metapsychists 

the  images  and  phrases  of  the  other  memory, 
and  that  when  the  brain  is  dead,  etc.  There 
may  be  some  force  in  this  objection;  but  would 
it  not  be  more  than  a  little  strange  were  the 
brain  unaided  to  perform,  with  a  care  which 
would  completely  absorb  it,  all  these  opera- 
tions, which  do  not  concern  it,  which  it  disre- 
gards a  moment  later,  and  of  which  it  does 
not  seem  to  have  any  clear  conception?  In  any 
case  this  is  not  the  brain  as  we  commonly  un- 
derstand it,  and  -here  already  we  have  a  very 
important  admission. 

12 

But  this  hidden  memory,  this  cryptomnesia, 
as  the  specialists  have  called  it,  is  only  one  of 
the  aspects  of  cryptopsychics,  or  the  hidden  psy- 
chology of  the  unconscious.  I  have  no  time  to 
recapitulate  here  all  that  the  scholar,  the  scien- 
tist, the  artist,  and  the  mathematician  owe  to 
the  collaboration  of  the  subconscious.  We 
have  all  profited  more  or  less  by  this  mysterious 
collaboration. 

This  subconscious  self,  this  unfamiliar  per- 
sonality, which  I  have  elsewhere  called  the 
Unknown  Guest,  which  lives  and  acts  on  its 
own  initiative,  apart  from  the  conscious  life 
of  the  brain,  represents  not  only  our  entire 
past  life,  which  its  memory  crystallizes  as  part 
of  an  integral  whole;  it  also  has  a  presenti- 
237 


The  Great  Secret 

ment  of  our  future,  which  it  often  discerns 
and  reveals;  for  truthful  predictions  on  the 
part  of  certain  specially  endowed  "sensitives" 
or  somnambulistic  subjects,  in  respect  of  per- 
sonal details,  are  so  plentiful  that  it  is  hardly 
possible  any  longer  to  deny  the  existence  of  this 
prophetic  faculty.  In  time  accordingly  the  sub- 
conscious self  enormously  overflows  our  small 
conscious  ego,  which  dwells  on  the  narrow 
table-land  of  the  present;  in  space  likewise  it 
overflows  it  in  a  no  less  astonishing  degree. 
Crossing  the  oceans  and  the  mountains,  cov- 
ering hundreds  of  miles  in  a  second,  it  warns 
us  of  the  death  or  the  misfortune  which  has 
befallen  or  is  threatening  a  friend  or  rela- 
tive at  the  other  side  of  the  world. 

As  to  this  point,  there  is  no  longer  the  slight- 
est doubt;  and,  owing  to  the  verification  of 
thousands  of  such  instances,  we  need  no  longer 
make  the  reservations  which  have  just  been 
made  in  respect  of  predictions  of  the  future. 

This  unknown  and  probably  colossal  guest — 
though  we  need  not  measure  him  to-day,  having 
only  to  verify  his  existence — is,  for  the  rest, 
much  less  a  new  personality  than  a  personality 
which  has  been  forgotten  since  the  recru- 
descence of  our  positive  sciences.  Our  various 
religions  know  more  of  it  than  we  do;  and  it 
matters  little  whether  they  call  it  soul,  spirit, 
etheric  body,  astral  body,  or  divine  spark;  for 
238 


The  Metapsychists 

this  guest  of  ours  is  always  the  same  transcen- 
dental entity  which  includes  our  brain  and  our 
conscious  ego;  which  probably  existed  before 
this  conscious  ego,  and  is  quite  as  likely  to  sur- 
vive it  as  to  precede  it;  and  without  which  it 
would  be  impossible  to  explain  three  fourths 
of  the  essential  phenomena  of  our  lives. 

13 

Passing  over  for  the  moment  some  of  the 
other  properties  of  this  singular  personality, 
which  we  believed  to  be  forever  relegated  to 
invisibility,  together  with  materialization,  ideo- 
plasty,  levitation,  lucidity,  bilocation,  psychom- 
etry,  etc.,  it  remains  for  me  to  explain  in  what 
a  curious  and  unexpected  fashion  a  somewhat 
recent  science  has  succeeded  in  recording,  in- 
vestigating, and  analyzing  some  of  these  physi- 
cal manifestations,  and  to  inquire  how  far  these 
observations  increase  the  probabilities  of  the 
survival  or  the  immortality  of  the  identical 
personality,  which  after  all  may  very  well  be 
the  essential  and  imperishable  portion  of  our 
ego. 

I  have  just  explained  how  far  the  investiga- 
tion of  hypnotism  and  mediumship  has  en- 
larged the  field  of  the  subconscious.  Hitherto, 
in  accordance  with  the  school  to  which  the 
investigator  belonged,  the  phenomena  estab- 
lished have  been  attributed  either  to  sugges- 
239 


The  Great  Secret 

tion,  or  to  a  fluid  of  unknown  nature,  examina-i 
tion  having  as  yet  been  confined  to  recording 
their  amazing  results.  Matters  were  in  this 
position,  and  the  disputes  between  the  "sugges- 
tionists"  and  the  "mesmerists"  were  threatening 
to  become  permanent,  when  about  fifty  years 
ago — to  be  exact,  in  1886  and  1867 — an  Aus- 
trian scientist,  Baron  von  Reichenbach,  pub- 
lished his  first  papers  on  "odic  emanations." 
Dr.  Karl  von  Prel,  a  German  scientist,  com- 
pleted Reichenbach's  work,  and,  being  gifted 
with  a  scientific  mind  of  the  first  order,  and 
intuitive  powers  which  often  amounted  to  gen- 
ius, he  was  able  to  deduce  all  its  consequences. 
These  two  writers  have  not  yet  had  full  jus- 
tice done  to  them,  and  their  works  have  not  yet 
obtained  the  reputation  which  they  deserve. 
We  need  not  be  surprised  by  this;  for  the  pro- 
gress of  official  science,  the  only  science  that 
permeates  the  public,  is  always  a  much  more 
leisurely  affair  than  that  of  independent  science. 
It  was  more  than  a  century  before  Volta's  elec- 
tricity became  our  modern  electricity  and  the 
ruler  of  the  industrial  world.  More  than  a 
century,  too,  had  passed  since  the  experiments 
of  Mesmer  before  hypnotism  was  finally  ac- 
knowledged by  the  medical  academies,  inves- 
tigated at  the  universities,  and  classed  as  a 
branch  of  therapeutics.  It  may  be  as  long  be- 
fore Reichenbach's  experiments,  improved  by 
240 


The  Metapsychists 

von  Prel  and  completed  by  De  Rochas,  begin 
to  bear  fruit.  In  the  meantime  their  investi- 
gations throw  an  abundant  light  on  a  whole  se- 
ries of  obscure  and  confused  phenomena  whose 
objective  existence  they  have  been  the  first  to 
prove,  while  indicating  their  source. 

Reichenbach  really  rediscovered  the  univer- 
sal vital  fluid,  which  is  none  other  than  the 
Akahsa  of  the  prehistoric  religions,  the  Telesma 
of  Hermes,  the  living  fire  of  Zoroaster,  the 
generative  fire  of  Heraclitus,  the  astral  light 
of  the  cabala,  the  Alkahest  of  Paracelsus,  the 
vital  spirit  of  the  occultists,  and  the  vital  force 
of  St.  Thomas.  He  called  it  uod,"  from  a 
Sankrit  word  whose  meaning  is  "that  which 
penetrates  everywhere,"  and  he  saw  in  it  quite 
correctly  the  extreme  limit  of  our  analysis  of 
man,  the  point  where  the  line  of  demarcation 
between  soul  and  body  disappears,  so  that  it 
seems  that  the  secret  quintessence  of  man  must 
be  uodic." 

I  cannot,  of  course,  describe  in  these  pages 
the  innumerable  experiments  of  Reichenbach, 
von  Prel,  and  de  Rochas.  It  is  enough  to  say 
that  in  principle  the  od  is  the  magnetic  or  vital 
fluid  which  at  every  moment  of  our  existence 
emanates  from  every  part  of  our  being  in  unin- 
terrupted vibrations.  In  the  normal  state  these 
emanations  or  effluvia,  whose  existence  was  sus- 
pected, thanks  to  the  phenomena  of  hypnotism, 
241 


The  Great  Secret 

are  absolutely  unknown  to  us  and  invisible. 
Reichenbach  was  the  first  to  discover  that  "sen- 
sitives"— that  is  to  say,  subjects  in  a  state  of 
hypnosis — could  see  these  effluvia  quite  dis- 
tinctly in  the  darkness.  As  the  result  of  a  very 
great  number  of  experiments,  from  which  every 
possibility  of  conscious  or  unconscious  sugges- 
tion was  carefully  eliminated,  he  was  able  to 
prove  that  the  strength  and  volume  of  these 
emanations  varied  in  accordance  with  the  emo- 
tions, the  state  of  mind,  or  the  health  of  those 
who  produced  them;  that  those  proceeding  from 
the  right  side  of  the  body  are  always  bluish  in 
color,  while  those  from  the  left  side  are  of 
a  reddish  yellow.  He  also  states  that  similar 
emanations  proceed  not  only  from  human  be- 
ings, animals,  and  plants,  but  even  from  miner- 
als. He  succeeded  in  photographing  the  od 
emanating  from  rock  crystal;  the  od  given  off 
by  human  beings ;  the  od  resulting  from  chemi- 
cal operations;  the  od  from  amorphous  lumps 
of  metal,  and  that  produced  by  noise  or  fric- 
tion; in  a  word,  he  proved  that  magnetism,  or 
od,  exists  throughout  nature — a  doctrine  which 
has  always  been  taught  by  the  occultists  of 
all  countries  and  all  ages.1 

1  Some  recent  experiments  by  Mr.  W.  J.  Kilner,  described 
in  his  book,  "The  Human  Atmosphere,"  give  positive  proof 
of  the  existence  of  these  emanations,  these  effluvia,  this 
human  "aura,"  or  at  least  of  a  similar  aura  which  con- 
stitutes a  true  astral  or  etheric  double.  It  is  enough  to  look 
at  the  subject  through  a  screen  formed  of  a  very  flat  glass 
242 


The  Metapsychists 


Here  then  we  have  the  existence  of  this 
universal  emanation  experimentally  demonstra- 
ted. Now  let  us  inquire  into  its  properties  and 
effects. 

I  shall  confine  myself  to  a  few  essential 
facts.  Thanks  to  these  emanations  it  has  been 
possible  to  prove  that  this  fluid  is  the  same  as 
that  which  produces  the  manifestations  of  table- 
turning;  in  the  eyes  of  a  sensitive,  indeed,  these 
manifestations  are  accompanied  by  luminous 
phenomena  whose  synchronism  leaves  no  doubt 
that  the  emission  of  the  fluid  is  correlated  with 
the  movements  of  the  table.  The  latter  does 
not  move  until  the  radiations  proceeding  from 
the  hands  of  those  experimenting  have  become 
sufficiently  powerful.  These  radiations  con- 
dense into  luminous  columns  over  the  center 
of  the  table,  and  the  more  intense  they  be- 
come the  more  lively  is  the  table.  When  they 
fade  away  the  table  falls  back  motionless. 

It  is  the  same  with  the  displacement  of  ob- 

dish  containing  an  alcoholic  solution  of  dicyanin,  a  coal- 
tar  derivative  which  makes  the  retina  sensitive  to  the  ultra- 
violet rays;  and  the  aura  becomes  visible  not  only  to  sen- 
sitives, as  in  Reichenbach's  experiments,  but  also  in  the 
eyes  of  95  per  cent,  of  persons  possessed  of  normal  vision. 
It  is,  however,  possible  that  this  aura  is  not  an  etheric 
double,  but  a  mere  nervous  radiation.  In  this  connection, 
see  the  excellent  summary  by  Monsieur  Rene  Sudre  in  No  3 
of  the  Bulletin  de  I'Institut  Metapsychique  International 
(January-February,  1921). 

243 


The  Great  Secret 

jects  without  contact,  levitation,  and  so  forth: 
manifestations  which  to-day  are  so  far  estab- 
lished and  verified  that  there  is  no  need  to  re- 
peat their  occurrence.  It  is  therefore  an  es- 
tablished fact  that  this  fluid,  which  is  able  to  set 
in  motion  a  pendulum  in  a  glass  vase  hermeti- 
cally sealed  with  the  blow-pipe,  just  as  it  is 
capable  of  lifting  a  table  weighing  more  than 
two  hundred  pounds,  possesses  a  power  which 
at  times  is  enormous  and  is  independent  of  our 
muscles.  This  power  may  be  attributed  to  our 
nerves,  our  minds,  or  what  not,  but  is  no  less 
plainly  and  purely  spiritual  in  its  nature. 

Moreover  it  is  almost  certain,  although  the 
experimental  proofs  are  in  this  case  less  com- 
plete and  more  difficult,  on  account  of  the  scar- 
city of  subjects,  that  it  is  the  same  odic  or  odylic 
force  that  intervenes  in  the  phenomena  of  ma- 
terialization; notably  in  those  produced  by  the 
celebrated  Eusapia  Paladino  and  by  Madame 
Bisson,  which  latter  are  far  more  conclusive  and 
far  more  strictly  controlled  by  the  medium.  It 
probably  draws,  either  from  the  medium  or 
from  the  spectator,  the  plastic  substance  with 
whose  help  it  fashions  and  organizes  the  tan- 
gible bodies  which  are  called  into  existence  and 
disappear  in  the  course  of  these  manifestations, 
thereby  giving  us  a  very  curious  glimpse  of  the 
manner  in  which  thought,  spirit,  or  the  creative 
fluid  acts  upon  matter,  concentrating  and  shap- 
244 


The  Metapsychists 

ing  it,  and  how  it  sets  about  the  business  of 
creating  our  own  bodies. 

15 

It  has  further  been  experimentally  demon- 
strated that  this  odic  or  odylic  fluid  may  be  con- 
veyed from  place  to  place.  Any  material  ob- 
ject may  be  filled  with  it.  The  object  magne- 
tized, into  which  the  hypnotist  has  poured  some 
porion  of  his  vital  energy,  all  possibility  of 
suggestion  being  set  aside,  will  always  retain 
the  same  influence  over  the  sensitive  or  medium; 
that  is,  the  influence  desired  by  the  hypnotist. 
It  will  make  the  medium  laugh  or  weep,  shiver 
or  perspire,  dance  or  slumber,  according  to  the 
purpose  of  the  hypnotist  when  he  emitted  the 
vital  fluid.  Moreover,  the  fluid  appears  to  be  in- 
destructible. A  marble  pestle,  magnetized  and 
placed  successively  in  hydrochloric,  nitric,  and 
sulphuric  acids  and  subjected  to  the  corrosive 
action  of  ammonia,  loses  nothing  of  its  power. 
An  iron  bar  heated  to  a  white  heat,  resin  melted 
and  solidified  in  a  different  shape,  water  that 
has  been  boiled,  paper  burned  and  reduced  to 
ashes,  all  retain  their  power.  Further — to 
prove  that  the  detection  of  this  force  is  not 
dependent  on  human  impressions — it  has  been 
shown  that  water  which  has  been  magnetized 
and  then  boiled  causes  the  needle  of  a  rheostat 
— an  instrument  for  measuring  electric  cur- 
245 


The  Great  Secret 

rents — to  deviate  through  an  angle  of  twenty 
degrees,  just  as  it  did  before  it  was  boiled.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  this  vital 
force,  thus  imprisoned  in  a  material  object,  can 
survive  the  hypnotist.  I  do  not  know  whether 
any  experiments  have  been  made  in  respect  of 
this  detail.  In  any  case,  it  has  been  observed 
that  more  than  six  months  after  they  were 
charged  with  od,  the  most  miscellaneous  sub- 
stances— iron,  tin,  resin,  wax,  sulphur,  and 
marble  retained  their  magnetic  powers  intact. 

16 

Not  only  does  the  odic  fluid  thus  transferred 
contain  and  reproduce  the  will  of  the  hypnotist; 
it  also  contains  and  represents  part  of  the  per- 
sonality of  the  hypnotic  subject  and  in  particu- 
lar his  sensitiveness  to  impressions.  Colonel  de 
Rochas  has  conducted,  in  connection  with  this 
phenomenon,  which  he  calls  "the  externaliza- 
tion  of  sensibility,"  a  host  of  experiments,  be- 
wildering yet  unassailable  and  conclusive,  which 
lead  us  straight  back  to  the  magical  practices  of 
the  wizards  of  antiquity  and  the  sorcerers  of 
the  middle  ages,  which  shows  us  once  more  that 
the  most  fantastic  beliefs  or  superstitions,  pro- 
vided they  are  sufficiently  general,  almost 
always  contain  a  hidden  or  forgotten  truth. 

I  need  not  refer  the  reader  of  these  pages 
to  experiments  which  are  familiar  to  all  those 
246 


The  Metapsychists 

who  have  ever  glanced  through  a  volume  deal- 
ing with  metapsychics.  I  must  keep  within  cer- 
tain bounds;  and  what  I  have  said  is  enough 
to  establish  the  fact  that  there  is  within  us  a 
vital  principle  which  is  not  indissolubly  bound 
up  with  the  body,  but  is  able  to  leave  it,  to 
externalize  itself,  or  at  least  in  part,  and  for  a 
brief  period,  during  our  lifetime.  It  may  be 
rendered  visible;  it  possesses  a  power  independ- 
ent of  our  muscles;  it  is  able  to  condense  mat- 
ter, to  shape  it,  to  organize  it,  to  make  it  live, 
not  merely  in  appearance,  like  phantoms  of  the 
imagination,  but  like  actual  tangible  bodies, 
whose  substance  evaporates  and  returns  to  us  in 
the  most  inexplicable  fashion.  We  have  also 
seen  that  this  vital  principle  may  be  trans- 
ferred to  a  given  object,  and  there,  despite  all 
physical  and  chemical  treatment  of  the  object, 
it  will  maintain,  indestructibly,  the  will  of  the 
hypnotist  and  the  sensibility  of  the  hypnotized 
subject.  May  we  not  at  this  point  ask  our- 
selves whether,  being  to  this  extent  separable 
from  and  independent  of  the  body — whether  be- 
ing so  far  indestructible,  as,  for  example,  in  the 
ashes  of  a  burned  document,  which  contained 
only  a  very  small  portion  of  it — whether  this- 
vital  fluid  does  not  survive  the  destruction  of 
the  body?  In  reply  to  this  question  we  have, 
quite  apart  from  logic,  the  extremely  impressive 
evidence  of  those  learned  societies  which  have 
247 


The  Great  Secret 

devoted  themselves  to  the  investigation  of 
strictly  authenticated  cases  of  survival;  and,  in 
particular,  the  500  to  600  apparitions  of  the 
dead  verified  by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Re- 
search. It  must  be  admitted  that  these  appari- 
tions, which  are  probably  odic  manifestations 
from  beyond  the  grave,  seem  far  more  credible 
when  we  are  acquainted  with  certain  properties 
of  the  mysterious  fluid  which  we  have  been 
considering. 

i? 

Since  the  death  of  the  leaders  of  the  "odic" 
school — Reicfaenbach,  von  Prel,  and  de  Rochas, 
— the  investigation  of  the  magnetic  or  odic 
fluid  has  been  somewhat  neglected;  mistakenly, 
to  our  thinking,  for  it  was  by  no  means  exhaust- 
ive; but  there  are  fashions  in  metapsychics  as 
in  everything  else.  The  Society  for  Psychical 
Research,  in  particular,  during  the  last  few 
years,  has  devoted  itself  almost  exclusively  to 
the  problems  of  "cross  correspondences";  and 
while  its  inquiry  has  not  yielded  absolutely  unas- 
sailable results,  it  does  at  least  permit  us  to  be- 
lieve more  and  more  seriously  in  the  presence 
all  about  us  of  spiritual  entities,  invisible  and 
intelligent;  disembodied  or  other  spirits,  who 
amuse  themselves — the  word  is  employed  ad- 
visedly— by  proving  to  us  that  they  make  noth- 
ing of  space  or  time  and  are  pursuing  some 
purpose  which  we  cannot  as  yet  understand.  I 
248 


The  Metapsychists 

know,  of  course,  that  we  can,  strictly  speaking, 
attribute  these  unexpected  communications  to 
the  unknown  faculties  of  the  subconsciousness ; 
but  this  hypothesis  becomes  daily  more  precari- 
ous, and  it  may  be  that  the  time  is  not  far 
distant  when  we  shall  be  finally  compelled  to  ad- 
mit the  existence  of  these  disembodied  entities, 
"doubles,"  wandering  spirits,  "elementals," 
"Dzyan-Choans,"  devas,  cosmic  spirits,  which 
the  occultists  of  old  never  doubted. 

In  this  connection,  to  say  nothing  for  the  pre- 
sent of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge's  Raymond,  or  of  the 
highly  interesting  spiritualistic  experiments  of 
P.  E.  Cornillier,  or  of  a  host  of  other  experi- 
ments the  consideration  of  which  would  take  us 
too  far  afield,  the  recent  researches  of  Dr. 
W.  Crawford,  which  have  made  a  sensation  in 
the  world  of  metapsychics,  have  afforded  a 
remarkable  confirmation  of  the  theory  of  the 
"invisibles."  It  is  true,  however,  as  we  shall 
see,  that  this  confirmation  proceeds  less  from 
the  facts  themselves  than  from  the  interpreta- 
tion which  has  been  placed  upon  them. 

18 

W.  J.  Crawford,  a  doctor  of  science  and  a 
professor  in  Belfast  University,  has  of  late  un- 
dertaken a  series  of  experiments  in  connection 
with  "telekinesia,"  or  movements  without  con- 
tact; experiments  which  were  conducted  with  a 
249 


The  Great  Secret 

degree  of  scientific  precision  that  wholly  ex- 
cluded any  idea  of  fraud,  and  which  absolutely 
confirm  those  which  Crookes,  the  Institut  Psy- 
chologique,  and  Ochorovicz  carried  out  with 
Home,  Eusapia  Paladino,  and  Mademoiselle 
Tomscyk  as  mediums. 

The  subject  of  these  experiments  was  that 
most  peculiar  phenomenon  which  is  a  sort  of 
physical  externalization;  of  the  duplication, 
amorphous  at  first,  and  afterward  more  or  less 
plastic,  of  the  medium.  From  the  medium's 
body  proceeds  an  indefinable  substance,  which 
is  sometimes  visible,  as  in  the  case  of  Eva, 
Madame  Bisson's  medium,  and  sometimes  in- 
visible, as  in  the  case  of  Crawford's  medium, 
but  which,  even  though  invisible,  may  be 
touched  and  measured,  and  behaves  as  though 
it  possessed  an  objective  reality. 

This  substance,  moist,  cold  and,  sometimes 
viscous,  which  is  known  as  "ectoplasm"  can 
be  weighed,  and  its  weight  exactly  corresponds 
with  the  weight  lost  by  the  medium;  and  it 
may  attain  as  much  as  50  per  cent,  of  the 
medium's  normal  weight. 

In  these  experiments  this  invisible  substance 
behaves  as  though  it  emerged  from  the  me- 
dium's body  in  the  form  of  a  more  or  less  rigid 
stem,  which  lifts  a  table  placed  at  a  certain 
distance  from  the  chair  in  which  the  medium  is 
seated.  If  the  table  is  too  heavy  to  be  lifted 
250 


The  Metapsychists 

directly  at  arm's  length,  so  to  speak,  the  psy- 
chic stem  or  lever  curves  itself,  chooses  a  ful- 
crum on  the  floor,  and  erects  itself  to  lift  the 
weight.  When  this  invisible  lever  has  its  ful- 
crum in  the  medium's  body  the  weight  of  the 
latter  is  increased  by  that  of  the  object  lifted: 
but  when  it  selects  a  fulcrum  on  the  floor  the 
medium's  weight  is  diminished  by  the  pres- 
sure exerted  on  the  floor. 

These  phenomena  of  levitation  were  per- 
fectly well  known  before  Dr.  Crawford's  in- 
vestigation; but  by  his  discovery  of  the  invisi- 
ble lever,  sometimes  perceptible  to  the  touch 
and  even  capable  of  being  photographed,  he  is 
the  first  to  reveal  the  entire  material  and  psychi- 
cal mechanism.  Moreover  in  the  course  of 
his  innumerable  experiments  he  noted  that 
everything  happened  as  though  invisible  enti- 
ties were  watching  the  experiments,  assisting 
and  even  directing  him.  He  communicated  with 
them  by  means  of  typtology,  and  having  re- 
marked that  these  mysterious  operators  did 
not  seem  fully  to  understand  the  scientific  in- 
terest of  the  phenomena,  he  questioned  them, 
and  concluded  from  their  replies  that  they 
were  only  laborers  of  some  sort,  manipulating 
forces  which  they  did  not  understand,  and  ac- 
complishing a  task  required  of  them  by  a 
higher  order  of  beings  who  could  not  or  did 
not  condescend  to  do  the  work  themselves. 
251 


The  Great  Secret 

It  may  of  course  be  maintained  that  these  in- 
visible collaborators  emanate  from  the  subcon- 
sciousness  of  the  medium  or  of  other  persons 
present,  so  that  the  problem  is  still  unsolved. 
But  a  conviction  which  a  scientist  who  was,  to 
begin  with,  as  skeptical  as  Dr.  Crawford,  was 
gradually,  and  by  the  very  force  of  things,  led 
to  accept,  deserves  to  be  seriously  considered. 
In  any  case  his  experiments,  like  those  in  con- 
nection with  the  odic  fluid,  prove  once  more 
that  our  being  is  far  more  immaterial,  more 
psychic,  more  mysterious,  more  powerful,  and 
assuredly  more  enduring  than  we  believe  it  to 
be;  and  this  was  taught  us  by  the  primitive  re- 
ligions, as  it  is  taught  by  the  occultists  who 
have  been  inspired  thereby. 

19 

While  we  do  not  lose  sight  of  the  other 
spiritualistic  manifestations — the  posthumous 
apparitions,  the  phenomena  of  psychometry 
and  materialization,  the  provision  of  the  fu- 
ture, the  mystery  of  speaking  animals,  the  mir- 
acles of  Lourdes  and  other  places  of  pilgrim- 
age, which  we  mention  here  only  to  show  that 
we  have  not  overlooked  them, — here,  as  com- 
pared with  the  prodigious  and  arrogant  affirma- 
tions of  the  past,  are  the  half-certainties,  the 
petty  details  slowly  reconquered  by  the  occult- 
ists of  to-day.  At  first  sight  this  is  little 
252 


The  Metapsychists 

enough,  and  even  if  the  great  central  problem 
of  our  metapsychics,  the  problem  of  survival, 
were  at  length  solved,  this  long  and  eagerly 
anticipated  solution  would  not  take  us  very  far; 
assuredly  not  nearly  so  far  as  the  priests  of  In- 
dia and  Egypt  went.  But  modest  though  they 
may  be,  the  discoveries  of  our  occultists  have 
at  least  the  advantage  of  being  founded  upon 
facts  which  we  can  verify,  and  should  therefore 
be  of  far  greater  value  to  us  than  the  more  im- 
pressive hypotheses  which  have  hitherto  evaded 
verification. 

20 

Now  it  is  quite  possible  that  to  penetrate 
any  further  into  the  regions  which  they  are  ex- 
ploring, the  experimental  methods  which  are 
the  safest  in  other  sciences  may  prove  insuffi- 
cient. Other  elements  must  be  considered 
than  those  which  science  is  accustomed  to  en- 
counter. Forces  may  perhaps  be  in  question 
of  a  more  spiritual  nature  than  those  of  our 
intellect,  and  in  order  to  grasp  and  control  them 
it  may  first  be  necessary  to  apply  ourselves  to 
our  own  spiritualization.  It  is  an  advantage 
to  possess  perfectly  organized  laboratories,  but 
the  true  laboratory  whence  the  ultimate  dis- 
coveries will  proceed  is  probably  within  us. 
This  the  priests  and  Magi  of  the  great  reli- 
gions seem  to  have  understood  better  than  we, 
253 


The  Great  Secret 

for  when  they  purposed  to  enter  the  ultra- 
spiritual  domains  of  nature  they  underwent  a 
protracted  preparation.  They  felt  that  it  was 
not  enough  that  they  should  be  learned,  but 
that  they  must  before  all  become  saints.  They 
began  by  the  training  of  their  will,  by  the  sacri- 
fice of  their  whole  being,  by  dying  to  all  desire. 
They  enfolded  their  intellectual  energies  in  a 
moral  force  which  led  them  far  more  directly 
to  the  plane  on  which  the  strange  phenomena 
which  they  were  investigating  had  their  being. 
It  is  probable  enough  that  there  are  in  the  in- 
visible, or  the  infinite,  things  that  the  under- 
standing cannot  grasp,  on  which  it  has  no  hold, 
but  to  which  another  faculty  can  attain;  and 
this  faculty  is  perhaps  what  is  known  as  the 
soul,  or  that  higher  subconsciousness  which  the 
ancient  religions  had  learned  to  cultivate  by 
spiritual  exercises,  and  above  all  by  a  renuncia- 
tion and  a  spiritual  concentration  of  which  we 
have  forgotten  the  rules  and  even  the  idea. 


254 


CHAPTER  XII 

CONCLUSIONS 


WE  have  already,  in  the  course  of  this  in- 
quiry, become  familiar  with  most  of 
the  conclusions  to  be  drawn  therefrom,  and  it 
will  therefore  suffice  to  recall  the  most  impor- 
tant in  a  brief  recapitulation. 

At  the  very  beginning  of  the  old  religions, 
and  especially  at  the  beginning  of  that  which 
seems  to  be  the  most  ancient  of  all  and  the 
source  of  all  the  rest,  there  is  no  secret  doctrine 
and  no  revelation;  there  is  only  the  prehistoric 
tradition  of  a  metaphysics  which  we  should  to- 
day call  purely  rationalistic.  The  confession 
of  absolute  ignorance  as  regards  the  nature, 
attributes,  character,  purposes,  and  existence 
even  of  the  First  Cause  or  the  God  of  Gods 
is  public  and  explicit.  It  is  a  vast  negation; 
we  know  nothing,  we  can  know  nothing,  we 
never  shall  know  anything,  for  it  may  be  that 
God  Himself  does  not  know  everything. 

This  unknown  First  Cause  is  of  necessity  in- 
finite, for  the  infinite  alone  is  unknowable,  and 
255 


The  Great  Secret 

the  God  of  Gods  would  no  longer  be  the  God  of 
Gods,  and  could  not  understand  Himself,  unless 
He  were  all  things.  His  infinity  inevitably  gives 
rise  to  pantheism;  for  if  the  First  Cause  is 
everything,  everything  partakes  in  the  First 
Cause,  and  it  is  not  possible  to  imagine  any- 
thing that  can  set  bounds  to  it  and  is  not  the 
Cause  itself,  or  part  of  the  Cause,  or  does  not 
proceed  from  the  Cause.  From  this  panthe- 
ism proceeds  in  its  turn  the  belief  in  immortal- 
ity and  the  ultimate  optimism,  for,  the  Cause 
being  infinite  in  space  and  time,  nothing  that  is 
of  it  or  in  it  can  be  destroyed  without  destroy- 
ing a  part  of  the  Cause  itself;  which  is  impos- 
sible, since  it  would  still  be  the  nothingness  that 
sought  to  circumscribe  it,  just  as  nothing  could 
be  eternally  unhappy  without  condemning  part 
of  itself  to  eternal  unhappiness. 

Absolute  agnosticism,  with  its  consequences; 
the  infinity  of  the  divine,  pantheism,  universal 
immortality,  and  ultimate  optimism — here  is 
the  point  of  departure  of  the  great  primitive 
teachers,  pure  intellects,  and  implacable  logi- 
cians, such  as  were  the  mysterious  Atlanteans, 
if  we  may  believe  the  traditions  of  the  occult- 
ists ;  and  would  not  the  very  same  point  of  de- 
parture impose  itself  to-day  upon  those  who 
should  seek  to  found  a  new  religion  which 
would  not  be  repugnant  to  the  ever-increasing 
exactions  of  human  reason? 
256 


Conclusions 


But  if  all  is  God  and  necessarily  immortal,  it 
is  none  the  less  certain  that  men  and  things 
and  worlds  disappear.  From  this  moment  we 
bid  good-by  to  the  logical  consequences  of  the 
great  confession  of  ignorance  to  enter  the  laby- 
rinth of  theories  which  are  no  longer  unassail- 
able, and  which,  for  that  matter,  are  not  at 
the  outset  put  before  us  as  revelations  but  as 
mere  metaphysical  hypotheses,  as  speculations 
of  great  antiquity,  born  of  the  necessity  of  rec- 
onciling the  facts  with  the  too  abstract  and 
too  rigid  deductions  of  human  reason. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  according  to  these  hy- 
potheses man,  the  world  and  the  universe  do 
not  perish;  they  disappear  and  reappear  alter- 
nately throughout  eternity,  in  virtue  of  Maya, 
the  illusion  of  ignorance.  When  they  no  lon- 
ger exist  for  us  or  for  any  one,  they  still  exist 
virtually,  where  no  one  sees  them;  and  those 
who  have  ceased  to  see  them  do  not  cease  to 
exist  as  though  they  saw  them.  Similarly, 
when  God  sets  bounds  to  Himself,  in  order  to 
manifest  Himself  and  to  become  conscious  of 
a  portion  of  Himself,  He  does  not  cease  to  be 
infinite  and  unknowable  to  Himself.  He 
seems  for  a  moment  to  place  Himself  at  the 
point  of  view  or  within  the  comprehension  of 
those  whom  He  has  quickened  in  His  bosom. 
2.57 


The  Great  Secret 

This  last  hypothesis  must  in  the  beginning 
have  been,  as  it  is  at  present  and  always  will 
be,  a  mere  makeshift;  but  there  was  a  time 
when  it  became  a  sort  of  dogma  which,  eagerly 
welcomed  by  the  imagination,  soon  completely 
replaced  the  great  primitive  negation.  From 
that  moment,  despairing  of  knowing  the  un- 
knowable, man  duplicated  and  subdivided  and 
multiplied  it,  relegating  the  inconceivable  First 
Cause  to  the  inaccessible  Infinite,  and  hence- 
forth concerned  himself  only  with  those  sec- 
ondary causes  by  which  it  manifests  itself  and 
acts. 

He  does  not  ask  himself,  or  rather  he  does 
not  dare  to  ask,  how,  the  First  Cause  being 
essentially  unknowable,  its  manifestations  could 
be  considered  as  known,  although  it  had  not 
ceased  to  be  unknowable;  and  we  enter  the 
vast  vicious  circle  in  which  mankind  must  re- 
sign itself  to  live  under  penalty  of  condemning 
itself  to  an  eternal  negation,  an  eternal  immo- 
bility and  ignorance  and  silence. 

Unable  to  know  God  in  Himself,  man  con- 
tents himself  with  seeking  and  questioning  Him 
in  His  creatures,  and  above  all  in  mankind. 
He  thought  to  find  Him  there,  and  the  reli- 
gions were  born,  with  their  gods,  their  cults, 
their  sacrifices,  their  beliefs,  their  moralities, 
their  hells  and  heavens.  The  relationship 
which  binds  them  all  to  the  unknown  Cause  is 
258 


Conclusions 

more  and  more  forgotten,  reappearing  only  at 
certain  moments,  as  it  reappeared,  for  exam- 
ple, long  afterwards,  in  Buddhism,  in  the  meta- 
physicians, in  the  ancient  mysteries  and  occult 
traditions.  But  despite  this  oblivion,  and 
thanks  to  the  idea  of  this  First  Cause,  neces- 
sarily one,  invisible,  intangible,  and  inconceiv- 
able, which  we  are  consequently  compelled  to 
regard  as  purely  spiritual;  two  of  the  great 
principles  of  the  primitive  religion,  which  sub- 
sequently permeated  those  religions  which 
sprang  from  it,  have  survived,  deep-rooted  and 
tenacious  of  life,  secretly  repeating,  beneath  all 
outward  appearances,  that  the  essence  of  all 
things  is  one  and  that  the  spirit  is  the  source 
of  all,  the  only  certitude,  the  sole  eternal  re- 
ality. 

3 

From  these  two  principles,  which  at  bottom 
are  only  one,  proceeds  all  that  primitive  ethic 
which  became  the  great  ethic  of  humanity:  un- 
ity being  the  ideal  and  sovereign  good,  evil 
means  separation,  division,  and  multiplicity, 
and  matter  is  finally  but  one  result  of  separa- 
tion or  multiplicity.  To  return  to  unity,  there- 
fore, we  must  strip  ourselves,  must  escape  from 
matter,  which  is  but  an  inferior  form  or  deg- 
radation of  the  spirit. 

It  was  thus  that  man  found,  or  believed  that 
259 


The  Great  Secret 

he  had  found,  the  purpose  of  the  unknowable, 
and  the  key  of  all  morality  without,  however, 
venturing  to  ask  himself  why  this  rupture  of 
unity  and  this  degradation  of  the  spirit  had 
been  necessary;  as  though  we  had  supposed 
that  the  First  Cause,  which  might  have  kept 
all  things  in  the  state  of  unity,  in  its  undivided, 
immobile,  and  supremely  blessed  bosom,  had 
been  condemned,  by  a  superior  and  irresistible 
law,  to  movement  and  eternal  recommence- 
ment. 

These  ideas,  too  purely  metaphysical  to 
nourish  a  religion,  were  soon  in  India  itself 
covered  by  a  prodigious  vegetation  of  myths, 
and  gradually  became  the  secret  of  the  Brah- 
mans,  who  cultivated  them,  developed  them, 
gave  them  profundity,  and  complicated  them, 
to  the  verge  of  insanity.  Thence  they  spread 
over  the  face  of  the  earth,  or  returned  to  the 
place  whence  they  had  set  forth;  for  while  it 
is  permissible  to  attempt  the  chronological 
localization  of  a  central  source,  it  is  impos- 
sible for  us  to  determine  where  they  rose  to 
the  surface  in  the  ages  before  the  dawn  of 
history,  unless  we  refer  to  the  theosophical 
legends  of  the  Seven  Races,  which  we  might 
perhaps  accept  if  we  were  supplied  with  docu- 
ments less  open  to  criticism  than  those  which 
have  hitherto  been  offered  to  us. 
260 


Conclusions 


4 

At  all  events,  it  is  easy  enough  to  follow  the 
progress  of  these  ideas  through  the  world 
known  to  history;  whether  they  went  hand  in 
hand,  or  one  following  another,  through  India, 
Egypt,  and  Persia;  or  found  their  way  into 
Chaldea  and  pre-Socratic  Greece  by  means  of 
myths  or  contacts  or  migrations  unknown  to  us; 
or,  especially  in  the  case  of  Hellas,  through 
the  Orphic  poems,  collected  during  the  Alex- 
andrian period,  but  dating  from  legendary 
ages,  and  containing  lines  which,  as  fimile 
Burnouf  observes  in  his  Science  des  Religions, 
are  translated  word  for  word  from  the  Vedic 
hymns.1 

As  a  result  of  the  Egyptian  bondage,  the 
Babylonian  captivity,  and  the  conquest  of 
Cyrus,  they  reached  the  Bible,  changing  their 
shape  to  harmonize  with  the  Jewish  monothe- 
ism; but  in  secret  they  were  preserved,  almost 
undefiled,  by  oral  transmission,  in  the  cabala, 
in  which  the  En-Sof,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the 
exact  reproduction  of  the  Hindu  Unknowable, 
and  leads  to  an  almost  similar  agnosticism, 
pantheism,  optimism,  and  ethic. 

These  ideas,  stifled  beneath  the  Bible  in  the 
Jewish  world,  and  in  the  Greco-Roman  world 

1  Emile  Burnouf,  La  Science  des  Religions;  p.  105. 
261 


The  Great  Secret 

beneath  the  weight  of  the  official  religions  and 
philosophies,  survived  among  the  secret  sects, 
and  notably  among  the  Essenes,  and  also  in 
the  mysteries;  reappearing  in  the  light  of  day 
about  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  in 
the  Gnostic  and  Neoplatonic  schools  of  phil- 
osophy, and  later  on  in  the  cabala,  when  they 
were  finally  put  into  writing;  whence  they 
passed,  more  or  less  distorted,  into  the  occult- 
ism of  the  middle  ages,  of  which  they  consti- 
tute the  sole  foundation. 

5 

We  see,  accordingly,  that  occultism,  or 
rather  the  secret  doctrine,  variable  in  its  forms, 
often  extremely  obscure,  above  all  during  the 
middle  ages,  but  almost  everywhere  identical 
as  to  its  basis,  was  always  a  protest  of  the 
human  reason,  faithful  to  its  prehistoric  tra- 
ditions, against  the  arbitrary  assertions  and 
pretended  revelations  of  the  public  and  official 
religions.  To  their  baseless  dogmas,  their 
anthropomorphical  manifestations  of  the  di- 
vine, illogical,  petty,  and  unacceptable,  they 
opposed  the  confession  of  an  absolute  and 
invincible  ignorance  of  all  essential  points. 
From  this  confession,  which  at  first  sight  seems 
to  destroy  everything,  but  which  leads,  almost 
of  necessity,  to  a  spiritualistic  conception  of 
the  universe;  it  was  able  to  derive  a  meta- 
262 


Conclusions 

physics,  a  mysticism,  and  a  morality  much 
purer,  loftier,  more  disinterested,  and  above 
all  more  rational  than  those  which  were  born 
of  the  religions  which  were  stifling  it.  One 
might  even  prove  that  all  that  these  religions 
still  have  in  common  on  the  heights  where  all 
are  united — all  that  could  not  be  debased  to 
the  level  of  the  material  requirements  of  an 
over-long  life — all  that  is  to  be  found  in  them 
that  is  awe-inspiring,  infinite,  imperishable,  and 
universal — they  owe  to  that  immemorial  meta- 
physic  into  which  they  struck  their  first  roots. 
It  would  even  seem  that  in  proportion  as 
time  removes  them  from  this  metaphysic  the 
spirit  leads  them  back  to  it;  thus,  to  value  only 
the  two  latest  religions,  without  mention  of 
all  that  they  borrowed  from  it  more  directly, 
we  find  that  the  God  the  Father  of  Christian- 
ity and  the  Allah  of  Islam  are  much  nearer  to 
the  En-Sof  of  the  cabala  than  to  the  Jahweh 
of  the  Bible;  and  that  the  Word  of  St.  John, 
which  is  not  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament 
or  the  synoptics,  is  merely  the  Logos  of  the 
Gnostics  and  the  Neoplatonists,  who  them- 
selves obtained  it  from  India  and  Egypt. 

6 

Is  this,  then,  the  great  secret  of  humanity, 
which  has  been  hidden  with  such  care  beneath 
mysterious  and  sacred  formulae,  beneath  rites 
263 


The  Great  Secret 

which  were  sometimes  terrifying,  beneath 
formidable  reticences  and  silences:  an  unmiti- 
gated negation,  a  stupendous  void,  a  hopeless 
ignorance?  Yes,  it  is  only  this:  and  it  is  as 
well  that  it  is  nothing  else;  for  a  God  and  a 
universe  small  enough  for  the  little  brain  of 
man  to  circumnavigate  them,  to  understand 
their  nature  and  their  economy,  to  discover 
their  origin,  their  aims  and  their  limits,  would 
be  so  pitiful  and  so  restricted  that  no  one  would 
resign  himself  to  remain  eternally  as  their 
prisoner.  Humanity  has  need  of  the  infinite, 
with  its  corollary  of  invincible  ignorance,  if  it 
is  not  to  feel  itself  the  dupe  or  victim  of  an 
unforgivable  experiment  or  a  blunder  impos- 
sible of  evasion.  There  was  no  need  to  call 
it  into  existence,  but  since  it  has  been  raised 
out  of  nothingness  it  must  needs  enjoy  the 
boundlessness  of  space  and  time  of  which  it 
has  been  vouchsafed  the  conception.  It  has 
the  right  to  participate  in  all  that  has  given  it 
life,  before  it  can  forgive  it  for  bringing  it 
into  the  world.  And  it  is  not  able  thus  to 
participate  save  on  the  condition  that  it  can- 
not understand  it.  Every  certainty — at  all 
events,  until  our  minds  are  liberated  from  the 
chains  that  fetter  them — would  become  an 
enclosing  wall  on  which  all  desire  to  live  would 
be  shattered.  Let  us  therefore  rejoice  that 
we  know  of  no  further  certainties  beyond  an 
264 


Conclusions 

ignorance  as  infinite  as  the  world  or  the  God 
Who  is  its  subject. 

7 

After  so  many  efforts,  so  many  experiments, 
we  find  ourselves  precisely  at  the  point  from 
which  our  great  teachers  set  out.  They  be- 
queathed to  us  a  wisdom  which  we  are  hardly 
beginning  to  clear  of  the  rubbish  that  the  cen- 
turies have  left  upon  it;  and  beneath  this  rub- 
bish we  find  intact  the  proudest  confession  of 
ignorance  that  man  has  ever  ventured  to  pro- 
nounce. To  a  lover  of  illusion  this  means  but 
little;  to  a  lover  of  truth  it  is  much  indeed. 
We  know  at  last  that  there  has  never  been 
any  ultra-human  revelation,  any  direct  and 
irrecusable  message  from  divinity,  no  ineffable 
secret;  and  that  all  man  believes  himself  to 
know  of  God,  of  His  origin  and  His  ends,  he 
has  drawn  from  his  own  powers  of  reason. 
Before  we  had  interrogated  our  prehistoric 
ancestors  we  more  than  suspected  that  all  rev- 
elations, in  the  sense  of  the  word  understood 
by  the  religious,  were  and  will  always  be  im- 
possible ;  for  we  cannot  reveal  to  any  one  more 
than  he  is  capable  of  understanding,  and  God 
alone  can  understand  God.  But  it  was  easy  to 
imagine  that  having,  so  to  speak,  been  wit- 
nesses of  the  birth  of  the  world,  they  ought  to 
know  more  of  it  than  we  do,  since  they  were 
265 


The  Great  Secret 

still  nearer  to  God.  But  they  were  not  nearer 
to  God;  they  were  simply  nearer  to  the  human 
reason,  which  had  not  as  yet  been  obscured  by 
the  inventions  of  thousands  of  years.  They 
are  content  with  giving  us  the  only  landmarks 
which  this  reason  has  been  able  to  discover  in 
the  unknowable:  pantheism,  spiritualism,  im- 
mortality, and  final  optimism ;  confiding  the  rest 
to  the  hypotheses  of  their  successors,  and 
wisely  leaving  unanswered,  as  we  should  leave 
them  to-day,  all  those  insoluble  problems  which 
the  succeeding  religions  blindly  attacked,  often 
in  an  ingenious  manner  which  was  none  the 
less  always  arbitrary  and  sometimes  childish. 

8 

Need  we  again  recapitulate  these  problems? 
— the  passage  from  the  virtual  to  the  actual; 
from  being  to  becoming;  from  non-existence 
to  existence;  and  the  descent  of  the  spirit  into 
matter — that  is,  the  origin  of  evil  and  the 
ascent  from  matter  to  spirit;  the  necessity  of 
emerging  from  a  state  of  eternal  bliss,  to  re- 
turn thither  after  purification  and  ordeals 
whose  indispensable  nature  is  beyond  our  com- 
prehension ;  eternal  recommencements,  to  reach 
a  goal  which  has  always  fled  us,  since  it  has 
never  been  attained,  although  in  the  past  men 
had  as  much  leisure  to  attain  it  as  they  will 
ever  have  in  the  future. 
266 


Conclusions 

I  might  increase  beyond  all  measures  this 
balance-sheet  of  the  unknowable.  To  close 
the  account  it  is  enough  to  add  that  the  ques- 
tion which  rightly  or  wrongly  causes  us  the 
greatest  anxiety — that  which  concerns  the  fate 
of  our  consciousness  and  our  personality  when 
absorbed  by  the  divine,  is  likewise  unanswered, 
for  Nirvana  determines  nothing  and  specifies 
nothing,  and  the  Buddha,  the  last  interpreter 
of  the  great  esoteric  doctrines,  himself  con- 
fesses that  he  does  not  know  whether  this 
absorption  is  absorption  into  nothingness  or 
into  eternal  blessedness.  "The  Sublime  has 
not  revealed  it  to  him." 

"The  Sublime  has  not  revealed  it  to  him"; 
for  nothing  has  been  revealed  and  nothing  has 
been  solved,  because  it  is  probable  that  nothing 
will  ever  be  capable  of  solution,  and  because  it 
is  possible  that  beings  whose  intellect  must  be 
a  million  times  more  powerful  than  our  own 
would  still  be  unable  to  discover  a  solution. 
To  understand  the  Creation,  to  tell  us  whence 
it  comes  and  whither  it  goes,  one  would  have 
to  be  its  author;  and  even  then,  asks  the  "Rig- 
Veda,"  at  the  very  source  of  primordial  wis- 
dom: "and  even  then,  does  He  know  it?" 

The  Great  Secret,  the  only  secret,  is  that 

all  things  are  secret.     Let  us  at  least  learn,  in 

the  school  of  our  mysterious  ancestors,  to  make 

allowance,  as  they  did,   for  the  unknowable, 

267 


The  Great  Secret 

and  to  search  only  for  what  is  there:  that  is, 
the  certainty  that  all  things  are  God,  that  all 
things  exist  in  Him  and  should  end  in  happi- 
ness, and  that  the  only  divinity  which  we  can 
hope  to  understand  is  to  be  found  in  the  depths 
of  our  own  souls.  The  Great  Secret  has  not 
changed  its  aspect;  it  remains  where  and  what 
it  was  for  our  forebears.  At  the  very  begin- 
ning they  managed  to  derive  from  the  unknow- 
able the  purest  morality  which  we  have  known, 
and  since  we  now  find  ourselves  at  the  same 
point  of  the  unknowable,  it  would  be  danger- 
ous, not  to  say  impossible,  to  deduce  other 
lessons  therefrom.  And  these  doctrines,  of 
which  the  nobler  portions  have  remained  the 
same,  and  which  differ  only  in  their  baser  char- 
acteristics, in  all  the  religions  whose  various 
dogmas  are  at  bottom  only  mythological  trans- 
lations or  interpretations  of  these  too  abstract 
truths,  would  have  made  man  something  that 
as  yet  he  is  not,  had  he  but  had  the  courage 
to  follow  them.  Do  not  let  us  forget  them: 
this  is  the  last  and  the  best  counsel  of  the 
mystical  testament  whose  pages  we  have  just 
been  turning  over. 


268 


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